Budget sparks talk of cuts

Jay School Board gave its approval to advertise the 2016 budget. But with the process came warnings that enrollment, and therefore revenue, is expected to continue dropping and some difficult decisions must be made.
Jay Schools will advertise a budget of $35,846,668, which is down more than $1.2 million from 2015, but that projects deficit spending for the fourth time in five years.
The board also approved Monday the hiring of Chris Krieg as the new Jay County High School boys basketball coach (see related story) as well as several other new hires, transfers and resignations.
Monday’s vote was the first step in the process of approving the budget, which must be advertised in a local newspaper and online at https://gateway.ifionline.org/ before a public hearing scheduled for Aug. 17. It is slated for adoption Sept. 21.
Jay Schools business manager Brad DeRome will advertise a budget of $35,846,668, which includes $24.7 million in spending from the general fund. Spending from the general fund, for which all dollars come from the state, was budgeted at nearly $26 million in 2015.

The rest of the budget was mostly unchanged from the current year in the areas of debt service ($3.9 million), capital projects ($3.4 million), transportation ($2.4 million), pension debt service ($936,193) and bus replacement ($396,000). Funding for those sections of the budget is raised through local property taxes, which resulted in a tax rate of 99 cents per $100 of assessed value for 2015. (That was down from $1.13 in 2014 and $1.16 in 2013.)
The budget projects deficit spending of $263,000 for 2016, which would continue a recent trend that has seen the school corporation spend more money than it has taken in. The result is that the corporation’s year-end general fund balance, which hovered around $3 million from 2005 through 2012, is projected to dip to $1.6 million at the end of this year and $1.4 million at the end of 2016.
Indiana Association of School Business Officials recommends maintaining an ending cash balance of 8 to 12 percent of annual spending — $2 million for Jay County at the low end.
DeRome referred to the continually falling numbers as a “budget red flag” and told board members Mike Masters, Kristi Betts, Beth Krieg, Mike Shannon and Ron Laux that if the pattern continues at the current rate the year-end cash balance would be at zero in four years.
Jay Schools has undergone a consistent decline in enrollment, which is now directly tied to state funding, over the last decade. It dipped from 3,725 in 2006 to 3,353 in 2014 and is expected to come in about 3,305 this year.
“One of the things that we struggle with, of course, as a board, is loss of enrollment,” said superintendent Tim Long. “The enrollment loss is real. And it’s something that we have to deal with.”
Over the last three years, the school corporation has reduced staff by about 40 employees to 499 in an effort to save money. Laux wondered out loud about the community’s preferences for making more budget cuts.
“I don’t know what programs folks would like to see cut versus buildings,” he said, while also mentioning a switch away from block scheduling as a possible cost-saving measure. “Buildings ultimately may be the only way …”
A community survey, the results of which were presented to the board in April 2014, showed a strong opposition to cutting elementary fine arts and physical education time and a preference for eliminating $1 per year health insurance for some administrators. Long said he will provide the full results of that survey again at the board’s Aug. 17 meeting, at which he also expects to have the results of an architect’s study about building use in the corporation.
With enrollment expected to drop significantly again next year — the class of 2016 is the largest in the corporation at 322 students — more reductions in spending will be necessary to balance the budget and rebuild the general fund balance.
Masters expressed frustration with the process overall, urging the community and his fellow board members to be ready to make some difficult choices before it’s too late.
“We’re going to have less kids. We’re going to have less money. We’re going to have less buildings,” Masters said. “Or we’re going to have no money.
“And then you’ll have somebody else that sits up here and they decide for us at the state level. That’s not what I want. That’s not what anybody in this room wants.
“So everybody — community, school board members — everybody needs to be ready to make some tough decisions. And we need to do it as a community.”
The board, with Greg Wellman and Cory Gundrum absent, also:
•Approved the hiring of Amy Goulet (middle school counselor), Martha Woodward (part time library aide) and Cody Thompson (instructional assistant).
•OK’d extracurricular assignments for Lana Kahlig (JCHS gymnastics coach), Paul Scott (West Jay Middle School eighth grade football assistant coach), Irene Taylor (WJMS student council, honor society and pep club sponsor), Violet Current (WJMS eighth grade volleyball coach), Shannon Current (WJMS seventh grade volleyball coach) and Rodney Craig (WJMS seventh grade football assistant coach).
•Accepted resignations from Chris Overholt (JCHS social studies teacher), Trenton Yoder (JCHS math teacher, drama sponsor and musical director), Rhonda Cunningham (Pennville Elementary alternative teacher), Mariana Garcia (JCHS instructional assistant), Nicole Lawhead (General Shanks Elementary instructional assistant), Kyle Bischoff (East Jay Middle School eighth grade history teacher) and Kyle Love (WJMS seventh grade assistant football coach).
•Transferred the following employees to new positions: Julie Carney (library instructional assistant at General Shanks and East elementary schools), Rotch Shope (General Shanks custodian), James Lugar (East custodian), Jessica Root (Bloomfield Elementary fourth grade teacher), Myra Oliver (JCHS instructional assistant) and Elizabeth Strausburg (General Shanks special education teacher).
•Heard a reminder from superintendent Tim Long that a welcome breakfast for staff is scheduled for 7 a.m. Friday at JCHS with a staff meeting to follow at 8 a.m. The first day of school for students is Monday.
•Approved a bus request from Jay Community Center for travel to a Ball State University football game on Sept. 3.
•Laux cast a dissenting vote on the board’s consent agenda without comment.