Recent History of USD 204 State Aid
In July of 2007, the Base State Aid per Pupil (BSAPP) was $4,374 per FTE (full-time equivalency) enrollment. The enrollment at that time was 2348.7 students along with various adjustments for At-Risk, Bilingual students, vocational education students, and transportation students for those beyond the 2.5 miles and funding for Special Education; our district received $14,512,584 in State Aid. We generated $4,261,895 in our Local Option Budget. A total of $18,774,479 was available to operate our district mission and vision for a 21st Century School. We opened a new elementary building at this time.
In July of 2008, the BSAPP was $4,433 per FTE enrollment. Our enrollment took a sharp decline that year and it fell to 2264.6 students for a decrease of 84.1 FTE students, but due to a declining enrollment provision in the law we were able to maintain the previous year's enrollment status of 2348.7 and we saw a slight increase in the At-Risk enrollment, along with Bilingual, vocational education, and transportation students.
In April of 2009, along with retirements and resignations, we had to reduce in the following areas:
In July of 2009, we were statutorily promised a BSAPP of $4,492 per FTE enrollment; but Legislators voted to decrease our funding even further to $4,280/BSAPP just prior to July 1st, the start of our next fiscal year. This was a decrease of an additional $212/BSAPP. Along with that, they eliminated the state aid for Capital Outlay; which was $255,217 the previous year, and eliminated our Professional Development funding of $14,124 and decreased Drivers Education funding by $5,900. Our enrollment moved back up to 2334.3 students for an increase of 69.7 FTE students; but due to the fact that we were able to use the previous year's enrollment number of 2348.7 we actually realized a decline in FTE base. We either have to use actual enrollment or the 3 year average, whichever is greater. Our increase in enrollment was not enough to overcome the decline the previous year. So, we actually decreased our FTE by 14.4 students. Then in December 2009, we were cut again to $4,012/BSAPP for a total decrease of $388/BSAPP. In December we had to find additional budget cuts that amounted to $809,000 .
In July of 2009, we:
Because of the additional cuts in December of 2009, we made the following adjustments:
It is hopeful that we will NOT have any additional cuts to our state aid before the end of this fiscal year.
Our total budget cuts since April of 2009 has amounted to $1,562,341, along with the elimination of state aid in other funds it comes to a total of $1,837,582.
Projecting for Fiscal Year 2011- 2012, we are anticipating at the minimal $86 cut to the BSAPP or $3926/BSAPP. We did increase student enrollment this fall by 20 students. This factor has been fluctuating the past three years. It’s gone from 2348 in 2007 down to a low of 2264 back up to (unofficially) 2357 for this year. So this factor is moving target when looking at long term projections. Based on the current enrollment this reduction in state aid would mean at least $202,000 reduction in state aid.
As you can see the major part of our school district General Fund and Supplemental Fund budgets are spent on the salaries and benefits of our staff. Unfortunately, that means that most of our remaining budget reductions will need to come from that piece of the pie.
For this current year we implemented at the following additional cuts:
These budget cuts have come at a great cost to much of our staff at USD 204 and will affect many households across our district. Since July 1st of 2008, we will have reduced the total overall budget by $3,123,248 ; this will include the elimination or reduction of over 55 staff members in addition to the many retirements that have taken place. Many who remain on staff have felt the reduction of hours and/or salary; and will share in the added responsibility of a larger work load as we continue to improve our quality education experience for our 21st Century learners. |
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