EVSD in recovery mode

An improving budget has allowed East Valley School District to restore some cuts made last summer.

The libraries have reopened and summer school is once again on the menu. Other things brought back include a high school counselor, new high school textbooks, field trips, money to buy books for the libraries, more security and building budgets.

The district made $1.8 million in cuts at the end of the last school year, eliminating programs and laying off teachers, classified employees and administrative staff. The most controversial cut was school librarians, which effectively closed the libraries. Students couldn’t check out books or use computers.

“There were things we were hearing about all fall,” said Superintendent Debra Howard.

During the 2006-07 school year the district overestimated its income and at the same time overspent. At the beginning of the year the district should have had $1.8 million in cash reserves to see it through the months when real estate taxes were not collected. Instead it had only $200,000, said business manager Skip Berquam.

The district began seeing signs of recovery in the fall of 2007. “People just slowed their spending,” Howard said. “The cuts were more effective than anyone anticipated.”

At the end of the fiscal year last August the district anticipated having $178,000 in reserves. Instead it had more than $800,000.

The district, which has faced declining enrollment for years, had budgeted for 3,935 students. About 85 more students than anticipated showed up, netting the district about $470,000 in additional state money. “The enrollment that came in is still a reduction, it’s just less of a reduction than we had budgeted for,” Howard said.

In addition, the district was reimbursed $193,000 for eight years of being overcharged for water usage and wastewater fees at the high school. “The county caught it,” Berquam said.

It became evident that some cuts could be restored. “We thought we didn’t need to make this as painful,” Howard said. An online survey was made available to staff and included a list of possible restorations to be voted on. Administrative staff and the district’s parent council also had a say.

Leslee McLachlan, president of the East Valley Education Association, said what the district chose to bring back matched the results of the survey pretty closely. “I don’t know that we’re in 100 percent agreement with what they brought back,” she said. “I want to see more teachers out there and more support in the classrooms.”

Most of the personnel cuts made last year have been restored. Some positions, such as the assistant superintendent and dean of students at Mountain View Middle School, will remain unfilled.

The libraries are open again but are mostly staffed by library technicians rather than librarians. The technicians can check out and reshelve books and keep the doors open so students can utilize the library. Howard knows it’s an imperfect solution, and the library situation will continue to be evaluated. “What we’re considering is this as a step right now,” she said.

McLachlan, who teaches kindergarten at East Farms Elementary School, is happy the libraries are open. “Pretty much the libraries were locked for days if the librarian wasn’t there,” she said. “It didn’t come back the way people thought it was going to. People wanted full-time librarians in all schools. We’re trying to get it more of the way it looked in the past.”

Library technicians are less expensive and free up existing librarians for other things, so McLachlan calls the plan both a “happy medium” and a temporary fix.

A district security position has been restored, so there is coverage in the district from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day. The building budgets at each school, which pay for things like classroom materials, were cut by 6 percent. Half of that funding has been restored. Overall about $170,000 has been spent on restored programs.

The additions can be sustained, Berquam said, and more restorations will be considered as the budget process continues. “You start these things conservatively,” he said.

The board of directors enacted a policy last month that requires having between 4 and 6 percent of the annual budget set aside in cash reserves. The budget for the 2008-09 school year is only now being put together, so what that number will be is unknown. The district currently has $1.6 million in cash reserves.

McLachlan is glad to see the progress. “Everybody wants to move forward in the district,” she said. “We’ve really come back financially much quicker than we anticipated.”