Leaders in the state-controlled Pulaski County Special School District are working to identify budget cuts to offset the forthcoming end to state desegregation aid and the loss of Jacksonville -- while also trying to raise teacher salaries.
The pieces of the puzzle are still being put together, they say. And the possibility of adjustments to the teacher salary schedule -- last increased in 2010-11 -- is on the table but will have to wait.
"We have some tough decisions to make," said Jerry Guess, superintendent of the 17,261-student district. "We have got to try to identify other ways that we can save the additional money that is required to put the district back on a level playing field."
Bill Goff, the district's chief financial officer, said it may take until March or April to finalize budget-cutting plans.
"We really don't need to make a recommendation to adjust salary schedules until we have that plan in place," he said. "If we can beat that time frame, I'm all for it. But there's a lot of work to do and it involves a lot of people. Every director has to look at their department or their school and say, 'If we have to cut 25 percent out of our budget, how do we go about it?'
"It may not be exactly 25 percent," he added, "but that is about the student population that will be going to the [new] Jacksonville school district."
Jacksonville district organizers have said the enrollment of their district would be about 4,000 students.
Goff has developed a five-year projection of revenue and expenditures for the district that shows it will need to reduce expenditures by $7.2 million in 2017-18 to meet anticipated revenue of $159 million that year.
The calculations take into account the end in 2017-18 to the $20,804,500 in annual state desegregation aid to district operating funds -- although the district will receive the amount for the sole use of school construction. There will be no desegregation funding at all in the following 2018-19 school year and beyond.
The five-year projections do not yet include the loss of revenue that the district will experience from the separation of Jacksonville from the Pulaski County Special district.
Jacksonville and north Pulaski County residents at the Sept. 16 school election voted overwhelmingly to separate from the Pulaski County Special district to form their own district.
Goff estimated that the separation will mean the loss of about $37 million to the Pulaski County Special district. About 25 percent of the Pulaski County Special's annual state foundation aid and 14 percent of the district's local tax revenue will go to the new district when it becomes fully operational, which he predicts would be the 2016-17 school year.
The district started this school year with a legal fund balance of $18 million, which was 10.2 percent of its expenditures last year and a requirement in its fiscal distress improvement plan. That plan was put into place after the state takeover of the district in June 2011, the dissolution of the locally elected school board and the state appointment of Guess as superintendent.
The district is budgeted to have $185.6 million in revenue this school year, expenditures of $178.4 million and transfers to other funds -- such as the building fund -- of almost $7 million. About 38 positions that have been funded with the state desegregation aid have been eliminated in this year's budget, Goff said, creating a saving of about $1.7 million.
Last school year, employees received a one-time bonus of $1,250. There is no bonus or across-the-board pay raise in this year's budget. Last week, the district's Personnel Policies Committee for certified staff -- a majority of which is made up of district teachers -- requested a 2 percent increase to the base salary for teachers, which would result in an average raise of $986 to teachers and cost the district $1.48 million.
The district's citizens advisory committee voted 4-3 against recommending approval of the 2 percent raise to Arkansas Education Commissioner Tony Wood who serves as the state controlled district's school board in lieu of a locally elected board. Wood at week's end did reject the 2 percent raise.
District administrators, at the urging of the advisory committee, are considering ways to make the district's beginning teacher salary of $32,175 more competitive with beginning salaries in other central Arkansas school systems such as Benton, Bryant, Cabot, Conway, Little Rock and North Little Rock. The Pulaski County Special district's beginning salary is 86.6 percent of the multi-district average, Goff said, while the district's top salaries are more competitive or exceed the average.
No decisions or recommendations have been made on a salary plan. But, an option for increasing the beginning salary at a greater rate than salaries for more experienced teachers, Goff said, is to convert "indexed" salary schedule to a "fixed dollar increment" schedule.
To add a 6 percent increase to the beginning salary and make no decrease to any cell on the salary schedule, the cost would be $2.3 million, or $886,951 more than the 2 percent plan favored by the Personnel Policies Committee.
While the first-year cost of converting to a fixed-dollar-increment schedule would be greater, pay raises in future years could be more affordable, Goff said. Adding $1,000 to the beginning salary in a fixed dollar schedule would result in everyone receiving $1,000. In an indexed schedule, the $1,000 to the base salary would result in an average salary increase of $1,500 to the teaching staff.
Goff said that the district must have competitive teacher salaries while also protecting its fiscal integrity.
"Having a sufficient fund balance with insufficient salary schedules will be a formula for failure," he said. "Before deciding when to improve the teacher salary schedule, it is necessary to decide what the salary schedule should look like."
In projecting revenue and expenditures for five years, Goff said he assumed a stable enrollment for the district. The district's enrollment of 17,261 is down 489 students compared to the 17,750 last year.
Coping with an enrollment drop is a normal function of school districts, Goff said.
"You have got to adjust staff as enrollment changes. If we lose students, that means we have fewer teachers next year. We'll make that balance out," Goff said.
"We're doing a great quality education," Guess said. "I think we will recover those numbers and I think the district will begin to grow again."
Metro on 10/28/2014