John Martin, Evansville Courier & Press
School districts throughout Indiana are having to analyze their spending practices like never before. From Tony Bennett's perspective, that can be a good thing.
This year's cuts in K-12 education funding — $300 million, or 3.5 percent of the total appropriation — are not likely to be restored in the near future, given the state's struggling revenue picture.
In fact, the amount Indiana spends on schools in 2011 actually could be less than the total for 2006, said Bennett, the state's superintendent for public instruction.
Bennett, though, sees a glass that is half full.
He is asking school districts to do whatever is necessary to shield classroom instruction, and he says such an examination will benefit education now and in the future.
Reaction to the cuts from school districts across the state, Bennett said, has been "mixed." Regardless, the Republican official's response to local school officials is always the same.
"First and foremost, I say to start with the 'Citizens' Checklist,'" Bennett said. "Let's talk about why we developed that and put it out there. It was to facilitate the conversations necessary for school districts to reset their budgets. In 2011, there's not going to be a tsunami of money coming back to school corporations."
The checklist is a series of steps that the Indiana Department of Education says schools can take without laying off personnel or cutting student programs.
Suggested steps include revamping insurance plans, selling buildings, freezing salaries, outsourcing functions and looking at various consolidation options.
Local school districts say they are using the checklist. Even so, the state's financial slump still is forcing moves that children, parents and teachers will notice.
Indianapolis Public Schools, the state's largest public school system, plans to cut 300 staff positions, including 100 teaching slots, 20 janitors and 20 school police officers.
Some of that cutting will be accomplished through attrition. But a large crowd protested the moves at a meeting last week.
The state's cuts forced the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. — Indiana's third-largest district — to change some long-range plans.
North High School, which had been scheduled to become a middle school once a new school complex opens in the middle of the 2011-12 academic year, is instead going to be shut down and sold.
That was one of a series of moves the EVSC made to achieve $8 million in ongoing general fund savings.
The corporation has switched health insurance carriers twice in the last two years to cut costs. It formed a cooperative purchasing organization involving many public and private schools.
In a surprise move, the EVSC decided to divest its own central office building behind the Civic Center. The district will relocate its offices to a Walnut Street building and must find a new place to have School Board meetings.
Other actions included laying off an administrative assistant and freezing administrative pay.
Teacher pay scales in the EVSC are not determined beyond the current school year.
"The next two or three years, we're probably looking at level state funding at best," said EVSC Superintendent Vincent Bertram. "We're doing everything we can to control costs."
The EVSC's current level of academic programs will remain intact, however. Bennett cited the EVSC and school districts in Columbus and Lebanon as being able to "address this (funding crunch) by identifying what their core mission was and evaluating everything in their budget with that vision."
All area school districts say they are taking that same approach.
But in doing so, they have encountered varying challenges and degrees of difficulty.
Dealing with financial strife isn't a new concept for the Metropolitan School District of Mount Vernon. Its state funding has slipped for the last few years because of falling enrollment.
In December — a month before the sweeping, statewide cuts were announced — Mount Vernon already was having to pare its general fund by $1.8 million.
By closing Hedges Central Elementary School after the current school year, Mount Vernon will save about $1.2 million annually.
The school board last week approved a series of other cuts that Superintendent Keith Spurgeon said will get the district to its $1.8 million target.
Teachers in Mount Vernon have agreed to a contract that includes pay cuts over the next two years, and administrators and other employee groups also are taking cuts. Travel and professional development and being paid for with grants rather than coming from the district's general fund.
Spurgeon instructed school principals to reduce their budgets for supplies by 4.4 percent. The district no longer offers GED testing, and it hopes to turn its adult enrichment classes over to another organization.
Mount Vernon is cutting overtime pay, billing school athletic departments for postgame cleanups, reducing power by 5 percent and cutting a few more positions.
The EVSC took several of those same steps.
Spurgeon, though, said cuts that are much more painful are forthcoming in Mount Vernon if the city's voters reject a property tax increase referendum on May 4.
He said the district still faces "a $3 million problem" caused by the statewide cut announced in January and the state's move toward a per-pupil funding base of $5,100. Mount Vernon schools were above that rate until the state's education funding formula changed two years ago.
A trip around Mount Vernon breakfast haunts last week indicated that district officials still have work to do to build support for the referendum.
"I don't think it's correct, raising property taxes and closing schools," said Paula Adam, who works at D&M's Diner on West Second Street. "Kids aren't getting the education they need now. They need to do more with what they've got."
Diner Betty Beste also plans to vote "no."
"Maybe they should manage their money better than they have in the past," she said.
Melba Tyson, having breakfast at McDonald's, was more sympathetic toward the school system's position, but she still leans toward voting "no."
"I hate to see Hedges Central close. It's the school that I went to and my kids went to," she said. "I hate to see classes get bigger. But I don't see how people can stand more taxes. I'm not for more taxes, that's for sure."
If passed, the referendum would be good for seven years, and it would raise only what the school district needs for each year. The maximum possible rate would be 25.1 cents per $100 assessed valuation.
Spurgeon said Mount Vernon residents "are cautious, and I don't blame them. We have made some presentations, and we have a lot more to do. I've heard some people say (after a presentation) 'I didn't realize that.' But it's a personal decision people are going to have to make. All we want is for people to have the facts and know the consequences."
Other school districts still are poring over their 2010 budgets, searching for places to cut.
In the North Gibson School Corp., "the effect upon us is $60,000 per month," said Mark Iunghuhn, a member of the school board. "We already had the 2010 budget accepted, and then two weeks later you learn you have to cut $60,000 per month.
"The really significant thing will be next year, if they take these cuts and then decide to cut again," Iunghuhn said.
Local school officials say the volume of employee retirements will play a role in deciding how the cuts are handled.
In the Warrick County School Corp., retirements could play a role in determining the future of driver's education, a summer musical and other items.
Warrick is looking for $2.5 million in cuts. At a school board meeting last week, Superintendent Brad Schneider quashed speculation that Tennyson Elementary School could close after the current school year.
Beyond 2010, closing a school would be viewed as a "last resort," Schneider told a roomful of Tennyson parents and teachers. The K-5 school has about 110 children.
Larger class sizes are possible throughout Warrick County, as the school district leaves vacant teaching positions unfilled to save money, Schneider has said.
Bennett, in a telephone interview last week, said he is not out to shut down small schools and small school districts, even though the citizens checklist encourages communities to explore consolidation options.
"I don't believe the correct metric for deciding to consolidate services and school corporations is size, but it should be looked at through the lens of, does every child in Indiana receive the services they need to be competitive," Bennett said.
"For high schools, do they receive calculus, physics, a fourth year of foreign language. We need to develop a metric to make sure students have the classes they need in order to be competitive in the 21st century."
Bennett did say he wants districts to continue to dig deep to find savings, and that health insurance benefits for school board members, which the EVSC and other area school districts continue to make available, also should be on the table.
"This should be the catalyst for these discussions," said Bennett, a former superintendent of Greater Clark County (Ind.) Schools.
"Go to the citizens checklist and thoroughly evaluate every item on that checklist. ... You're going to have to seek long-term solutions. It's going to involve everybody putting some skin in the game."