Whitefish schools to hold levy

Whitefish schools will ask voters in May for $271,600 to alleviate next year’s budget crunch.

The school district is asking for operational levies to help reduce the deficit it anticipates in 2011-12. Voters will be asked to approve a $174,600 elementary levy and a $97,000 high school levy at the school election May 3.

Even if those levies pass, the money likely won’t come close to eliminating the shortfall Whitefish anticipates. School officials won’t know exactly how large the deficit is until state legislators approve a school funding formula.

If lawmakers make no changes to school funding, Whitefish schools will be about $972,000 in the red next year, district Clerk Danelle Reisch said.

Unless schools receive unexpected money from the Legislature, the district will cut at least $700,000 from next year’s budget — even if the levies pass, she said.

“If we get any legislative relief at all, it will help,” she said.

Money from the Legislature could mean the district won’t have to levy as much money. Voters still be asked for $271,600 because ballots will already have been printed, but the district might not need to take that much money, Reisch said.

State funding also could give the district additional budget authority so the cuts wouldn’t have to be as deep. Those cuts haven’t yet been outlined, Reisch said.

“There are some teachers, some paraprofessionals and some administrators floated in there somehow,” she said. “But we don’t have the total picture put together. We’re not sure what it’s going to look like.”

The district already has notified many staff members that they could be laid off.

Regardless of what happens in the Legislature, the district must have a budget-cutting plan in place by June 1. That’s the deadline to notify teachers whether they will have jobs next fall, Reisch said.

The deficit for Whitefish schools is due in part to a decrease in state funding over the last two decades. As state coffers have contributed a smaller percentage of school budgets, local taxpayers have picked up the balance.

In the last biennium, schools also received federal stimulus dollars, some of which went directly to schools and were dedicated to special education and Title I programs. Other money went through the state for distribution.

But state law requires Montana to use nongeneral fund money “whenever possible before using general fund appropriations,” which means the state used those federal dollars to supplant money that had already been allocated to education.

The Legislature had promised 3 percent increases to school budgets in 2009-10 and again in 2010-11; 2 percent of last year’s increase came from one-time-only federal stimulus money that will not be replaced in the next biennium.

In Whitefish, the budget problem has been compounded by declining enrollments. Much of the general fund budget is based on the number of students in the district; as that number has dropped, so has Whitefish’s budget.

Enrollment at Whitefish High School this fall was down 19 students — or 3 percent — from the year before. Student numbers have dropped by 25 percent over the last decade.

At the elementary level, enrollment numbers are beginning to climb, but the student population is still 9 percent smaller than it was a decade ago.

The district did receive some help with next year’s budget when the teachers union, the Whitefish Education Association, offered not to take raises to base salaries and to cover any increases in insurance costs.

Some teachers will still receive raises; they automatically receive more money for every additional year of experience and for additional education.

Based on current staffing levels, those contractual raises will cost the district about $116,000 in 2011-12. But that number is significantly less than it could have been if teachers had negotiated raises to their base pay.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.