Greeley Evans School District 6 faces budget cuts of at least $14 million, if not more. Here’s what we know.
Greeley Evans School District 6 faces budget cuts amid COVID-19 fallout. Photo by Kelly Ragan.
By Kelly Ragan
Greeley Evans School District 6 is facing some serious budget cuts – to the tune of at least $14 million, or about 5% of its budget, if not more.
As the state of Colorado anticipates a $3.3 billion revenue shortfall, members of the school board are keenly aware public education makes up 36% of the state budget.
“You can’t get to a remedy for that kind of shortfall without impacting public education,” said Superintendent Deirdre Pilch at a school board meeting May 11.
District 6 would have had a surplus, Pilch said, if state revenue and per-pupil funding were what the district anticipated before the global pandemic.
But things changed. And although we don’t yet know exactly what the state will do, the projections don’t look good.
This year, District 6 planned to include a step and lane increase for teachers, an annual raise that rewards them for longevity in the district and seeking out additional education, as well as a 2% cost-of-living increase. If the district still agrees to those raises and the state cuts per-pupil funding, there’s no way around a budget shortfall.
Even if state education funding somehow doesn’t take a hit and simply holds steady, the step and lane increase, paired with the cost-of-living adjustment, would still put District 6 into the red by about $4.7 million.
But the state likely will cut funding. The district calculated out what that would mean for it if the state cuts per-pupil funding by various percentages.
Anticipated district shortfall:
5% cut: $14 million reduction
10% cut: $23.3 million reduction
14.68% cut: $32 million reduction
Projections in the state for cuts to per-pupil funding are as high as 20%, Pilch said, but the district didn’t go that far in its own projections.
Meggan Sponselor, District 6’s chief financial officer, said at a school board meeting May 11 there was a reason she stopped at 14.68%.
The state constitution requires a certain level of funding thanks to the school finance funding formula, which the state has used since 1994. District 6 would hit the minimum required by law with a cut of 14.68%.
Pilch said District 6 has already identified and begun to take action on $13 million worth of cuts, but that still only gets the district to just under that 5%.
Though positions have been eliminated, said school board President Michael Mathews, people haven’t; the district hasn’t announced any layoffs. It has worked to shuffle people into different positions.
The cuts the district has identified include:
Academic Achievement: $2,572,400
Communications: $50,000
Custodial: $200,000
Finance: $220,000
Facilities: $3,910,000
Human Resources: $94,000
Information Technology: $200,000
School Leadership: $698,000
School Budget Allocations: $275,000
School Full-Time Equivalent Reduction: $1,600,000
Special Education: $1,090,000
Superintendent and Board of Education: $116,700
Transportation: $210,000
Salary adjustments (no cost-of-living increase): $2,176,436
Total: $13,412,536
“That doesn’t quite get us to that 10% number we need,” Sponselor said, “so we have a long way to go.”
So what does all that mean? Most of the specifics still need to be hashed out, since the district doesn’t yet know what the actual number will be.
But district spokesperson Theresa Myers gave the NoCo Optimist some generalized perspective on the list.
“We are eliminating positions, we have pulled back some staffing from schools, we are not filling other positions, we are cutting department budgets and we have reopened negotiations with teachers and will likely reduce the raise they are getting,” Myers wrote in an email. “We have significantly reduced our professional development budget for teachers. We have basically eliminated our Capital Construction budget.”
What does that mean for the bond and mill levy override?
All 2019 bond issue projects, such as replacing Greeley West High School, are still on track.
Mathews said he’s heard some people ask if the district can use some of the bond money for other things that may come up during the COVID-19 response.
“The short answer is no,” Mathews said. “We can only use the money for the very specific things that were on the ballot.”
And they will. Some construction projects are set to kick off this summer, Mathews said.
The same goes for the mill levy override voters approved in 2017.
But, Sponselor said, the district is looking to see if there are any costs that make sense to shift onto mill levy override funding.
When will the district recover?
Though he said he hopes the economy rebounds quickly for everyone’s sake, Mathews said the district can’t approach COVID-19 like it’s an issue that will go away quickly. The board is planning to feel the financial pains of COVID-19 for at least three to five years, he said.
“We’re still feeling the impacts of the Great Recession,” Mathews said.
That’s thanks to the budget stabilization factor.
What’s the budget stabilization factor?
In response to the Great Recession of 2009, the Colorado Legislature crafted a new factor in the school finance formula called the budget stabilization factor.
The BS factor (which educators often still say with a smirk and knowing smile), sometimes also known as the negative factor, is a function in the school finance formula.
In 2000, Colorado voters approved Amendment 23, a constitutional amendment intended to protect and increase funding for K-12 education.
But then the Great Recession happened, igniting a state budget crisis. So, in 2009, Colorado lawmakers worked it out so Amendment 23 applies to part of school funding: the base.
That essentially means the negative factor helps lawmakers divert funds that were set aside for education funding to other parts of the state budget — think transportation.
Lawmakers have been working to “buy down” the negative factor to get more money into school districts across the state — essentially closing the gap between what funding schools would have received without the negative factor beginning to influence the state budget in 2009 and what funding school districts actually have.
The statewide shortfall peaked at more than $1 billion during the 2012-13 school year, according to the Colorado School Finance Project.
By 2019-20, shortfall shrunk to about $572 million statewide, according to the Colorado School Finance Project, thanks to an education funding-friendly legislature.
District 6’s BS factor is already at 7%, or about $14 million. Additional cuts will make that worse.
Another 5% cut would bring the district’s negative factor up to 11.6%, meaning the district would be down $23.3 million from what it could have had before the BS factor was added in 2009.
“The fat has already been trimmed,” Mathews said. “We start out already down 7%. That’s baked into the cake.”
Projections for 2020-21 range from a loss of $300 million, to $500 million, to $800 million statewide, in addition to the existing $572 million shortfall. In a worst-case scenario, that could mean a future shortfall of more than $1.3 billion — worse than what we saw during the 2012-13 school year, according to the Colorado School Finance Project. But those are projections, and we don’t yet know how things will shake out, especially as federal dollars get distributed to K-12 budgets.
Chalkbeat reports Gov. Jared Polis issued an executive order detailing state plans to distribute $1.67 billion from the federal relief bill. The plan includes giving $510 million to K-12 education and $450 million to institutions of higher education.
Mathews said he’s proud of the progress District 6 has made over the past several years and hopes to keep up the good work.
“The state of education in a community has a bigger impact than people realize,” he said. “It impacts who wants to move into your community and who will stay in your community.”
So for now, he said the school board is anxiously waiting to see what the legislature will do.