Failed levy prompts budget cuts

On the heels of a defeated school plant facilities levy, the Coeur d’Alene School District has a new set of problems: Special education spending went $1 million over budget this past year.

Though the district has shifted funds from other areas of the budget to make up the difference, a new fiscal year is posing more challenges.

Rising costs and salary increases are forcing more than $2 million in budget cuts, beginning with summer school programs set to start this month.

Summer school for elementary and middle school students is being eliminated.

Staffing cuts are being made, including the elimination of an assistant superintendent position, and the district won’t purchase any new furniture or textbooks in the coming year.

Money for professional development is being reduced, along with the district’s maintenance budget and each school in the district will receive less funding overall.

No new buses are being purchased, and the district won’t be adding any money to its reserve fund despite a school board policy that makes it a rule.

“We’re not done,” Superintendent Hazel Bauman said during a June 9 school board meeting. “There are more cuts that need to be made. It’s with a heavy heart we’re doing this, but I don’t see any alternative.”

In an attempt to rein in special education spending, the district will reduce the number of outside contracts for services and won’t sign any new outside contracts.

Bauman said she has heard concern from parents of special education students, but noted cuts were only made in areas of inefficiencies and where services were being duplicated.

“Any cuts we’ve made in special education will not affect their children,” Bauman said.

The summer school program, which served about 200 elementary and middle-school students, will be replaced with “intense remediation” for those students once school begins in the fall, Bauman said.

“We’re confident these children will be held harmless and they will not be left behind,” she said.

High school students can still attend summer school through the district’s alternative school, Project CDA.

The district is inviting community members with a background in finance to join school administrators, trustees and others on a task force that will look at the district’s budget, root out inefficiencies and recommend areas for cuts.

“I think people will feel more ownership of that budget as we go forward,” board Chairwoman Edie Brooks said.

The committee will also evaluate the district’s failed $31.1 million school plant facilities levy.

Fewer than half of Coeur d’Alene voters supported the levy.

Bauman said many expressed concern that the district didn’t spend money as promised from a prior levy to rebuild Lakes Middle School.

“There is a trust gap, and in order to bridge that gap, we need to put some procedures, practices and policies in place,” Bauman said.

The district is scheduling public forums this summer to gather input from those who opposed the levy.

The next forum will be June 23, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at Midtown Center, 1505 N. Fifth Street. A third forum is scheduled for June 26, from noon to 1:30 p.m. at Hayden City Hall, and the fourth forum will be July 22 at 7 a.m. at the Midtown Center.