CJ Cuts $1.8 Million from Budget

From today’s Joplin Globe:

CARL JUNCTION, Mo. — The Carl Junction School District has trimmed $1.8 million from next school year’s budget, but the superintendent is discounting the effect on students.

“I really don’t think the students will feel the impact of it,” Superintendent Phil Cook said. “We tried to keep the cuts where they’d feel it the very least.”

And while most of the trimming — a necessity of a state revenue shortfall — has come from a reduction in personnel, Cook said the district has managed to not lay off any teachers or reduce any salaries.

When staff members have retired or resigned, their positions have gone unfilled. The district has now left 25.5 positions across all its schools unfilled, including 21 certified positions, Cook said.

Jim Cummins, assistant superintendent for finance and operations, said the 21 unfilled certified positions will save the district roughly $900,000 in salaries and benefits.

Fewer teachers will result in larger class sizes, though Cook said classroom numbers still will fall within state recommendations, or 25 to 33 students per classroom, depending on the grade.

“Pretty much all the classes were close to the desirable mark (of 20 to 28 students per classroom),” Cook said. “When you reduce the staff, they’re going to go up, but they’ll still be pretty good.”

While the district has been able to hold salaries constant so far, Cook said, there are no pay guarantees for upcoming years.

“The staff, they’re going to feel it a little bit,” he said. “If things get worse, we just don’t know what could happen as far as salaries go.”

Cook said other sources of revenue for teachers might not be available soon. The Career Ladder program, which pays teachers for work done outside the classroom, has often been targeted for cuts by state lawmakers.

“There are programs that are going away that are dollars in their pocket,” Cook said. “We’re trying not to freeze (salaries) because teachers are already feeling it in other areas.”

Administrators also have cut expenditures for the current fiscal year by about $500,000, Cummins said.

The district picked up about $50,000 in unused employee health insurance that had been budgeted, he said. The technology department held off on about $100,000 in purchases, textbook orders were scaled back, and reductions in summer school supplies and transportation will save about $45,000, he said.

The future of education funding remains uncertain and unpredictable. With talk of more state revenue shortfalls by next summer, Cook said, it is nearly impossible to know whether more cuts would be necessary at the local level.

“We just don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “If it’s worst-case scenario where they start slashing our foundation formula (used to allocate state funds to public school districts) and we were to lose $1 million in revenue, I’m sure every school district in the state is going to have to make additional cuts. If it stays fairly flat, we’re hoping we should be all right going into the following years.”