Bentonville Board Looks To Pare Budget

— The School Board is expected to approve about $2 million of cost-cutting measures when it meets today.

The School District's top administrators developed a list of six cuts that will have an estimated impact of $2.06 million on the budget for the 2014-15 school year. Board members reviewed the list at their meeting last week and seemed not to have any concerns with it.

AT A GLANCE

Names And Mascots

The Bentonville School Board likely will choose a name and mascot at its meeting today.

The board decided last week to come up with its three favorite name and mascot suggestions, then let junior high students give their own input on those choices through an election.

In last week’s election, 1,527 seventh- and eighth-grade students voted, according to Mary Ley, district communications director. About two-thirds of them voted for Bentonville West High School as the name. Alliance High and Bentonville Alliance High were the other two choices.

The winning mascot choice was Wolverines, which earned 610 votes, or about 40 percent of the total. The other choices were Jaguars (444 votes), Falcons (291 votes) and Chargers (165 votes).

Source: Staff Report

The most significant item on the list is eliminating up to 15 teaching positions through attrition, through either resignations, retirements or reassignments. Officials believe that will reduce the budget by about $1 million. The district will save another $632,962 because this is the last year of payments for an employee buyout.

A third item relates to buying online textbooks when possible. This will save $250,000, according to officials.

The plan also calls for assigning department heads, team leaders and other positions with less than full teaching schedules to full schedules to maximize the course load for all teachers. That's expected to save $65,000.

Arranging alternate transportation options for some students who take classes at Northwest Technical Institute in Springdale and eliminating or renegotiating contracts for web-based instructional and intervention programs will save a combined $109,000.

The effort to trim next year's budget began in October when a committee of central-office administrators, principals and teachers was formed to examine options. The committee's recommendations then were forwarded to Superintendent Michael Poore and other senior administrators who provided a rank order, revised cost estimates and modified some items.

One of the original recommendations presented in December was to cut the annual stipend the district gives to National Board certified teachers from $3,000 to $1,500. About 100 teachers qualify for that stipend. Teachers protested that recommendation, and the board agreed to remove it from the list.

The budget-cutting process came about for several reasons, Poore said.

The district does not want to rely on "growth money" to develop the budget for next year as it did for this year, Poore said. The state gives districts growth money based on how much their enrollment grows from one year to the next. Bentonville officials projected 15,300 would enroll in the district this year, but as of this month it had only 15,037 students.

District officials are also preparing for increased operating expenses associated with the opening of the second high school in 2016. Officials also want to find a way to give raises to employees, Poore said.

The district's original budget-cutting target was $2.4 million. That figure is still within reach, assuming the board approves the recommended cuts, Poore said. A personnel audit of the district -- conducted by Prismatic Services of Huntersville, N.C. -- and delivered last month, will help.

"We then think, as an administrative unit, within the next month we will be able to find the additional resources to get us to that targeted amount, possibly through some things we're doing not only with the personnel audit, but also in making additional reductions in classroom instructional resources, and also possibly programs in the classroom," he said at Tuesday's board meeting.

Poore urged board members to take a long-term perspective of the process.

"We know we can tighten our staffing, but I would suggest to you as we look at tightening our staffing, and looking at this audit, that it's not a one-year process. That really is a process that has to evolve over a three-year span in order to not take away or diminish anything that we're doing in terms of our old performance levels," he said.

Grant Lightle, board vice president, said last week he believes district officials need to take some time to reflect on the direction they want to go with high school programs.

"I've always thought we try to do too much," Lightle said. "I think we're trying to run a junior college almost, but then we have these huge gaps in things we don't do. We don't have an industrial arts program or a shop program, these kinds of things."

Some existing programs attract very few kids, he said.

"So I feel like we need to spend a lot of time with this and really drill down into what we're doing as a district," Lightle said.

Besides cutting costs, the district also has developed proposals for enhancing its revenue. One idea is to increase the base rental rates on all facilities by at least 50 percent.

The district also is committed to requiring reimbursement from the Boys & Girls Club for the cost of transporting students from schools to the club. That would provide the district about $119,000.

Poore said he met recently with club officials about the proposal. While he didn't back down from the proposal, he offered to help raise money for the club to pay for transportation.

"I offered them a suggestion of a fundraising activity that hasn't been done in this community," he said. "I felt that was well received."

NW News on 03/17/2014

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