A Tale of Two Budgets
At its Thursday, April 24 meeting, the Kalamazoo School Board received a presentation by Gary Start, KPS’s Deputy Superintendent, on KPS’s budget options for the 2008-09 school year. These options are dramatically different depending upon whether the millage renewal passes on Tuesday, May 6.
What would be the consequences of a defeat of the millage renewal? To summarize, these consequences include:
- If the renewal is defeated, the District could not consider new initiatives such as: behavioral alternative schools for secondary students, to provide students who have significant behavioral problems with targeted assistance in a separate setting; or, a dual language school in the Vine neighborhood.
- The District would have to consider freezing employee pay, rather than the baseline budget’s proposed nominal increase of 1%. A freeze in employee pay would mean that employees would face a reduction in their real standard of living, given that inflation between the 2007-08 and 2008-09 school year will probably be at least 3%.
- The District would have to consider a wide range of cuts that would gut District budgets for textbooks, supplies, athletics, and transportation, after these budgets have already been cut extensively over the past 8 years.
- Even if all of the above was done – no new initiatives, a freeze in employee pay, and gutting District support budgets – the District could only balance its budget, if the renewal millage fails, by making at least 2 out of 5 major cuts in services to students. These 5 possibilities for major cuts include:
*** Increasing class size in some elementary schools to 26 to 1 in kindergarten and 29 to 1 in grades 1 through 3 ;
*** Increasing high school class size by cutting 6 teaching positions;
*** Eliminating elementary instrumental music instruction;
*** Eliminating funding for magnet schools to carry out their themes, for example, eliminating funds for the Northglade Montessori School to carry out its Montessori approach;
*** Significantly cutting middle school budgets for security, home/support interventionists, and tutoring.
Alternatively, instead of completely cutting 2 out of 5 of these areas, less extensive cuts could be made in all 5 of the areas, for example elementary school class size could be increased, but only to 27 to 1 in grades 1 through 3. But if the District did not adopt all the other budget cuts, for example did not gut District support budgets, then more budget cuts would have to be adopted in these 5 major areas of services to students.
These budget details emphasize a key point that all voters should understand: defeat of the millage renewal will lower taxes modestly, but will have significant effects in reducing real services to students.
Mr. Start’s April 24th powerpoint presentation on KPS budget options can be downloaded from http://www.kalamazoopublicschools.com/education/components/docmgr/default.php?sectiondetailid=469&fileitem=4752&catfilter=764
A pdf version of this powerpoint is at http://www.kalamazoopublicschools.com/education/sctemp/0e24247e3338dcc16...
The Kalamazoo Gazette's coverage of the April 24th Board meeting can be found at http://www.mlive.com/news/kzgazette/index.ssf?/base/news-28/120913502156...