MARYSVILLE – Leaders in the Marysville School District are hoping for a disruptive beginning to the year.
That’s one of the weird signs of the times in the district of 10,600 students that set a state record with a 49-day teachers strike last fall.
The disruptions would come from a need to hire more teachers and reassign students to different classes in the days and weeks after schools open Sept. 7.
The early-year musical chairs would signal the district’s enrollment losses have bottomed out and could represent initial steps toward financial recovery.
The Marysville School Board on Monday approved an $83.49 million budget that plans for the worst – the loss of another 200 students. It expects to know if enrollment has stabilized by the fourth day of classes, Sept. 10.
The district expects to begin the school year with between 43 and 45 fewer teaching positions than a year ago.
Fewer students hurts the district financially in two ways.
First, enrollment drives staffing. Schools receive on average $5,200 per full-time student from the state for basic education.
Secondly, it affects the amount of money schools can collect from voter-approved local levies. Marysville will collect $14 million in local tax money, but legally can’t pick up another $1 million in local voter-approved money because of the enrollment loss.
The school district “purposely took a very conservative approach” with the 2004-2005 budget and predicted that student enrollment will be 2 percent less than last year, said Jim Baker, the district’s finance director.
The assumption was based on the declining enrollment seen during the 2003-2004 school year, a phenomenon district officials attribute to both a sluggish job market and lingering effects from the strike.
If student enrollment turns out greater than anticipated, the district will have to hire additional teachers in order to maintain appropriate class sizes, Baker said.
“We hope that’s the case. We hope this assumption is too conservative,” he said.
But hiring new teachers and reconfiguring classes will mean disruptions for students and parents, Superintendent Larry Nyland warned.
“That’s going to make for a rough start,” he said.
Marysville ended the 2002-2003 school year with a $4.13 million reserve. It will finish 2003-2004 school year at the end of the August with a $2.8 million reserve.
However, of that figure – $1.4 million – has legal strings attached. Most is grant money that will be carried over into the new school year and be used for specific purposes.
Also within the reserves is $170,000 – the second half of a controversial $340,000 buyout of former Superintendent Linda Whitehead’s contract.
Marysville expects to end the 2004-2005 school year with a $1.73 million reserve.
The cushion is thin. The district’s written goal for a budget reserve, set by a previous school board, is 6 percent or about $5 million.
This year’s budget reflects ongoing efforts to trim district spending while maintaining, to the degree possible, the number of teachers on the payroll, Baker said.
Last year, when the district realized there was a $2 million hole in its budget, new school board members and others questioned whether it could continue to afford spending nearly $1 million in annual salaries for its nine top administrators.
Nyland eliminated two of the eight executive directors’ positions that existed under Whitehead, all of which paid more than $100,000 a year.
One of the people whose job was eliminated is Judy Parker, the school district’s spokeswoman. Nyland has decided to take on some of her former duties.
The other position was the executive director of operations slot vacated by Jim Fenstermaker who is now employed in the Oak Harbor School District. Other administrators will absorb that position.
In reducing school district spending “I think we’ve done everything possible to start at the service center and work out,” Baker said.
The school board has set much of the tone for cuts.
One of its first actions after being sworn in late 2003 was to impose restrictions that nearly banned board travel. Since then, school board members appear to have spent less than $400 on travel inside and outside the district, according to spending records.
Board members Helen Mount and Ron Young also stopped collecting their stipends.
Baker is hoping for a more predictable year. The district won’t have to absorb more than $900,000 in strike-related costs as it did this year.
The $904,513.62 includes more than $400,000 in contracted legal and security fees during the strike as well as unemployment benefits for non-teaching employees.
Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446 or stevick@heraldnet.com.
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