Cheney, Medical Lake schools facing shortfalls

The Medical Lake School District is facing a triple budget hit as it deals with declining enrollment, rising fuel prices and higher than anticipated cost-of-living increases mandated by the Legislature that add up to a $600,000 shortfall.

And it is not alone. Nearly every school district in the county is facing budget cuts – even districts such as Cheney, where student enrollment is rising, will come up $500,000 short.

Medical Lake’s enrollment topped out at 2,346 in 1997-‘98. It’s now down to 2,035 and still dropping.

“Over the years we’ve just continued to decline,” said Superintendent Pam Veltri. The problem is that staffing at Fairchild Air Force Base has dropped as well. And now, instead of requiring that airmen live within 30 minutes of the base, staffers may live up to 50 minutes away. That’s drawing Air Force families out of Medical Lake.

Every year the Legislature determines the cost-of-living increase for teachers and classified staff. This year it was set at 4.4 percent and teachers must get an additional 0.7 percent raise on top of that. Retirement and health care costs also rose. The state funds teacher and classified positions based on student enrollment and only provides additional money for raises for those positions. Nearly every district, however, hires additional employees who are paid entirely out of its own budget.

“You couldn’t run a school district on the number of positions they fund,” Veltri said.

Medical Lake has about 20 teachers and 44 classified staff members that are not funded by the state. Classified staff includes custodians, lunchroom staff and other non-certificated positions. Covering the cost-of-living increases and rising fuel prices will leave the district $600,000 in the hole and looking for things to cut.

“We’re waiting to see who is going to retire,” Veltri said. “We try to do it through attrition. Right now it’s just undetermined.”

In addition to not replacing retiring teachers and staff, the district will look at everything from not buying textbooks to postponing technology upgrades. “I’m sure it will be a mix of everything.”

The Cheney School District doesn’t have to deal with declining enrollment, but there’s still the issue of raises for six unfunded teachers, plus more than 15 teachers funded from Initiative 728 money. The money pays for teachers to reduce class sizes, but many districts that receive the money are finding that it didn’t increase enough to fully fund the raises for the teachers it pays for. Cheney’s budget will be $500,000 short.

“To someone like me, that’s real money,” said Superintendent Mike Dunn. “One of the things that’s a little bit different here is that our school enrollment has been increasing moderately. It’s a challenge for us, but not probably of the magnitude of other school districts.”

About three years ago the district was forced to cut $700,000. “We did that through attritions, administrative cuts,” Dunn said. “We just had to tighten our belts. We don’t think we’re going to have to make some of the major cuts we’ve made in years past.”

Dunn said he doesn’t think the district will have to cut staff, but at the same time the number of teachers will not be increased to cover the larger number of students. “You’d probably have to look at areas that aren’t directly classroom areas,” he said. “We’re still analyzing what that would look like.”

The rising cost of fuel has been a concern, as has the increased food costs. The district will have to consider raising the price of school lunches to compensate. “Where we’re really getting hit is the cost of milk,” he said.

Small school districts that don’t fund many positions over the state’s funding formula are feeling less of a pinch when it comes to covering the cost-of-living increases, but they still face the fuel and food costs hurdles. The Liberty School District has 500 students. “We’re not looking too bad,” said Superintendent Bill Motsenbocker. “We did have a retirement of a high school teacher with quite a few years of experience. We’re not going to completely replace her.”

Add that to the retirement of a classified staff member and the district should break even, he said.

The district also benefits from receiving Small School Enhancement dollars from the state because the high school has less than 300 students. “If we didn’t have any retirements, we would have had to go to reduction in force,” Motsenbocker said.