The Nome Board of Education has passed a $14.3 million budget for 2016, which will require the district to take over $303,000 out of fund balance next year.
With state education funding still indefinite, Superintendent Shawn Arnold explained at a special meeting this week what the current situation is in Juneau.
“As of today, we’re looking at $110,000 reduction from just the BSA alone,” he said. “That’s in addition to the one-time funding reductions and our losses of early childhood education grants. So, there’s been several reductions from our budget.”
To account for the loss in funding, the district is scaling back in several areas. Most notably, they have removed the equivalent of 5 full-time positions, which is saving about $400,000. Those positions are the Community Schools position held by the retiring Richard Beneville, the expeditor maintenance position, one aide at Nome Elementary, a half-time special education secretary position, a half-time PE position at Nome Beltz, and one instructional specialist position at the District Office.
With loss of the Pre-Kindergarten grant, one teacher will be maintained with title funds, while the other two tenured Pre-K teachers will be placed elsewhere in the district.
Arnold wants to prevent tapping staff for as long as possible, but salaries account for almost 90 percent of district expenditures. There will be no reductions in instructional staff next year. However, Arnold says the district isn’t exactly in the clear—he’s willing to tighten the belt a little further if more cost savings are found.
“The cost saving measures are not going to stop now. We’re still going to continue looking at ways to save costs, and you know, just because the budget may be finalized doesn’t mean that we’re not going to continue looking at those different options,” said Arnold.
In other savings, there will be three months that the district will not have to pay insurance premiums to AETNA for employees. That preserves about $200,000 in this year’s budget—money that can be tapped during the difficult years to come. With that significant savings this year, business manager Paula Coffman was able to move some funds from this year into next year to dull the pain.
That leaves the district taking only $18,000 from fund balance this year. They had projected needing almost 10 times that, but prevented such a shortfall largely because so many staff positions were unfilled this year.
Meanwhile, the $150,000 JROTC program has no room in the general fund. Typically, the program is partially funded by donation while Nome Schools picks up the remainder. Now, if it has any hope of continuing, the program would need to be fully funded from outside.
So far, over a hundred people—both staff and community members—completed the district’s survey, which asked respondents to rank school resources that they’d like to save, and suggest others for cuts. Superintendent Arnold says responses ran the gamut, but overwhelmingly the music program was voted for future funding, and increasing class sizes was unpopular.
NPS will submit its 2016 budget to the City Council today.
