Kyrene School District Budget
Budget cuts from state legislature for 08-09 school year
02-17-09
Budget decisions by the Arizona State Legislature mean the Kyrene School District must reduce this school year’s maintenance and operations budget* by $1.9 million. (That amount is equal, for example, to 26 teacher/administrator salary and benefit total compensation packages.) Kyrene must also reduce the soft capital budget** by about $400,000. This includes dollars that purchase instructional materials such as textbooks, copiers and software.
As Superintendent Dr. David Schauer has previously stated, the Kyrene Governing Board and Administration are fiscally conservative and always have an eye toward the future. The Kyrene School District has been in declining enrollment for nearly a decade and during that time has continually been evaluating programs and making adjustments for cost efficiencies. Kyrene has some of the lowest administrative costs in the state and spends more money in the classroom than most comparable districts.
Last fall when the state’s economy began to point to pending shortfalls, Kyrene took several pro-active measures. These included pre-paying a portion of certain expenses such as insurance and health care and cutting from 15 to 30% of unspent dollars from the current year budget to reserve funds for this kind of situation. At this time we do not see any immediate changes to services Kyrene students and families are receiving.
The next challenge for the Arizona State Legislature is to create a balanced budget for 2009-2010. The deficit for next year is even greater than the current budget year and therefore, is of great concern to us. The initial proposals were that Kyrene would experience reduced funding of nearly 17million dollars for 2009-2010. A reduction of this type would have a devastating impact on our programs.
The Kyrene School District recently informed all Kindergarten Instructional Assistants that their positions in kindergarten would not be continued for the 2009-2010 school year. This change aligned our Kindergarten program with the level of funding provided by the state. Eighty-nine positions were involved in this decision saving approximately 1.25 million dollars.
*The Maintenance and Operations (M&O) Budget includes the day-to-day expenses of running the school system, like salaries, supplies, transportation and utilities. The majority of operating expenses are paid out of the district’s M&O Fund, which is funded through a mix of local, state and federal tax dollars.
**The Capital Budget includes construction of new schools, expansion of existing schools, major renovation and replacement of older facilities, equipment, vehicles, technology, textbooks and other instructional aides.
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