School district prepares for budget cuts

For all the drastic cuts being made, one important chunk of Wyoming’s financial picture has yet to be examined. At this time, school districts across the state are waiting to hear how the shortfall will affect their budgets in the coming years.

As Governor Mark Gordon has repeatedly pointed out, education takes up a sizeable portion of the state budget. However, it is enshrined in Wyoming law that schools be funded to a certain level, which is why education was not included in the $500 million cuts that were recently announced.

“There is a quality of education that they are responsible to fund,” confirms Superintendent Mark Broderson, Crook County School District (CCSD).

Instead, the governor has left it to the Wyoming State Legislature to decide what to do about education – a conversation that won’t be had until the legislative body next meets. With potential delays to January’s session due to the ongoing pandemic, school districts are currently in limbo.

Conversations have already begun on what could be done to trim the budget without causing damage to the school system, says Broderson, but the uncertainties make things tough.

“We’re not going to pull the trigger on anything without some good information,” he says. “Right now, we’re basically having discussions for the possibility of cuts down the road.”

Examining the district’s expenses is nothing new, of course.

“We’ve done this in the past with the supply budgets and things like that,” Broderson says. “If we have staffing changes, like voluntary retirements and those kinds of things, perhaps those positions will not be replaced and we’ll absorb those positions. We’ve done that in the past too.”

CCSD will look for ways to trim the budget in each building, Broderson says, but at this time the amount is unknown.

“The state hasn’t made any commitments as far as what they’re going to do,” he points out.

The state has been concerned about school funding for years, he says, but has delayed making a decision on what to do about it.

“The phrase I hear is ‘kicking the can down the road’,” Broderson says. “We continue to hear we can’t cut our way out of this, but that’s all that’s been done for the last several years.”

In the seven or eight years since the warning bells began sounding, he says, nobody has taken a serious look at the alternative: finding new sources of revenue. To date, legislators have yet to come up with an idea to generate revenue that was able to pass muster.

Unless that changes during the next session, budget cuts are all but inevitable.

“If they don’t do anything to generate revenue, the information we’ve received is that they are going to run out of funding for us, so something has to be done,” he says.

Even so, school districts can’t actually be certain the cuts will come this year. Until now, the legislature has avoided touching the education budget lest the districts initiate legal proceedings based on the fact that, by law, schools must be funded to that certain level.

“There is a certain percentage of people who think nothing is going to happen, that they’re going to figure out a way to keep us funded to avoid a lawsuit, which they’ve gone through in the past,” Broderson says.

If finding revenue is the alternative to cuts, could the district raise its own funds? Possibly, Broderson says, but that’s another unknown quantity.

During the most recent meeting of the Board of Trustees, for example, the superintendent floated the idea of a recreation mill levy to go towards the school’s sport programs. This, of course, would need to be approved by the board after receiving public input, and it may or may not receive the community’s support.

Planning for cuts is thus a necessity, but nobody wants to make decisions without information, Broderson says. If the 2021 legislative session is indeed delayed until a later date, he suspects a lot of districts will object to cuts being made for the next school year because their staff will already be hired and tentative budgets will already be approved.

Adjusting schedules and combining classes are two methods through which the district will look for possible cuts. It may be possible to adjust classroom sizes, though this could be difficult in CCSD’s smaller schools.

“When you have multiple classes with two teachers teaching, you can combine those classes, whereas with a school like Hulett, you only have one grade and one teacher per class, so there’s not much combining to do, although we have done that in the past,” he says.

The trouble is, says Broderson, there are no obvious areas left in which the belt could easily be tightened. If cuts are made, they will affect the county’s students.

“Anything we cut that is not a supply unit and involves classes, you’re removing an opportunity from our students,” he says.

For example, the district could choose to cut a sport program, Broderson says, but the district wouldn’t save all that much while cutting out an opportunity for the kids.

The same is true for elective classes. Broderson does not feel these should be on the table for the same reason: a reduction of choice for students.

“One of the things we’ve been pretty firm on is that we don’t want to reduce the student opportunities that we provide,” he says.