Recently, 500 randomly selected Idaho voters were asked this, and many more questions, to determine their views on education funding.

Not surprisingly, more than eight in 10 Idahoans oppose the legislature’s decision.  Opposition to the cuts spans the partisan divide with majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents opposed to the action.

A more detailed analysis of the poll results will be made public in the next few weeks.

Trustees are seeking parents’ and residents’ views on potential cuts and on declaring a financial emergency.

Legislative action resulted in a decrease in state funding of about $4 million for the 2010-11 school year.  Some budget-cutting options that have already been mentioned are eliminating the district’s water safety program, midday busing for kindergartners and field trips.

The district is asking patrons to offer other suggestions.

kevensen@journalnet.com

POCATELLO — The Pocatello/ Chubbuck School District is holding a public hearing today to help board   members decide if they should declare a financial emergency, which could mean cuts in teachers’ salaries for the second year in a row.

School officials are trying to figure out the best way to cover a $7 million   hole in the budget caused by cutbacks in state funding and the possibility of another 5.5 percent holdback in August. But roughly 90 percent of the district’s funding is tied up in teachers’ salaries and benefits, which is basically untouchable without the declaration, said Marianne Donnelly, board chairwoman.        “We’re already operating on as lean a system as we can operate. Most of our budget is tied up in salary and benefits and there are (not many other places) we can go,” she said.

School districts are able to renegotiate contracts right now due to the Legislature’s decision to declare a statewide fiscal emergency, but District 25 teachers have already taken a hit. They received a 1 percent pay cut in their salaries last year with additional cuts in benefits; and if another emergency is declared, they could face as much as a 7 percent loss in pay for the upcoming school year. Officials say they can’t cut   staff positions without losing state funding, so another reduction in salary may provide the best option.

“It’s a tremendous blow to morale with people working as hard as they do to try and provide an education,” Donnelly said. “It’s hard to keep motivated when they keep whacking your pay and you’re not making much to begin with.”

Officials have already made several changes to cut back on spending, eliminating roughly $4.3 million from the budget. Kindergarten has been changed to all day, every other day to eliminate noon busing, and the school district no longer provides transportation to other locations if students are interested   in taking a course not offered at their school. In addition, field trips have been eliminated, Donnelly said, and the school district is looking at cutting some   extracurricular programs and raising fees for others; they’re hoping to eliminate roughly $300,000 from the extracurricular activities budget next year.

School officials know they have some tough decisions to make, so they are encouraging the public to share their ideas and concerns at today’s meeting. The board will meet in executive session at 4:30 p.m. to discuss teacher negotiations and personnel issues, and the public portion of the meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. The meeting will take place at 3115 Pole Line Road.

School officials did not finalize the agenda until Friday night so some people may not have received a copy, Donnelly said, but anyone who would like to view the full agenda can look at it on the district’s Web site,  www.d25.k12  . id.us

Parents of incoming kindergartners can review the schedule Tuesday when they register their child at their neighborhood elementary school.

State funding for the district will be cut by about $5.2 million next year, and eliminating midday busing will help reduce the district’s transportation costs by $273,000, district spokeswoman Allison Westfall said Monday. Changing to a full-day, alternating-day schedule also provides an more hours of instruction for the district’s youngest students and allows for some innovative approaches to provide extra help for students who need it, officials said.

BY JOE ESTRELLA - jestrella@idahostatesman.com
Copyright: © 2010 Idaho Statesman
Published: 04/12/10

District officials are projecting state general funding of $150 million for next year, down from the $158 million this year. At the same time, enrollment is forecast to increase by about 900 new students next year.

The result: Salaries will no longer be sacrosanct, and all of the district’s 5,000 employees will be paying a higher percentage of the cost of their benefits, according to Superintendent Linda Clark.

“It’s a given,” Clark said. “Statewide, 85 percent of a school district’s budget goes to salary and benefits. When the state cuts salaries for the second straight year, there is no way the districts can balance their budgets without cutting salaries.”

The Legislature gave Idaho’s 114 school districts the ability to cut teachers’ salaries by declaring a financial emergency in its 2010-11 education budget. That allows school districts to get around a state law that prohibits paying teachers less than it did the previous year, said district spokesman Eric Exline.

Clark said the board’s emphasis next year will be on spreading the cuts across the system rather than cutting jobs. The board will discuss the budget and take public comments and suggestions during its regular meeting on Tuesday.

All Idaho school districts depend on the state for the bulk of their funding. Ninety percent of Meridian’s $200 million general fund for 2009-10 was money received from the state.

The public education budget Idaho lawmakers approved for next year includes a 6.5 percent reduction for administrative salaries and a 4.1 percent reduction in salaries for teachers and all other district employees. It is the second consecutive year the Legislature has earmarked less money for public education than it did in the previous year.

Overall, $1.21 billion in general fund money has been allocated for public education in 2010-11, or 1.4 percent less than the $1.23 billion for the current school year. Last year’s budget, however, got an additional $179 million boost in federal stimulus money that was used to backfill cuts, said Paul Headlee, a budget and policy analyst with the Legislature’s Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee. That money was not available for next year’s budget, which means the reduction in the state education budget will actually be 7.5 percent next year.

“The federal stimulus money prevented falling off the funding cliff for one year,” Headlee said. “But it was a one-time thing, and then you have to take it out of the budget.”

Meridian won’t have the $15 million rainy-day fund it had at the beginning of 2009-10, having spent $8 million of that reserve on salary increases called for in the second year of its contract with the Meridian Education Association, which represents 1,800 teachers.

Exline said there is about $7 million left in the rainy-day fund. Exline said the board has not decided whether to tap those funds any further.

Not everybody thinks teacher salaries are the place to look for savings.

Mary Berg has four children in three Meridian schools. She wants the district to look at eliminating programs that require hiring judges to evaluate required projects for fifth- and eighth- graders, as well as the transportation costs for the program that allows students to attend schools outside their geographic area.

“I think there are some things that we’ve become accustomed to that we don’t necessarily need,” Berg said.

Bridget Colpitts has two students at Meridian Middle School, where she is the president of the Parent Teacher Student Association. She says the cuts will eventually filter down to student activities and the availability of supplies.

Colpitts said parents are going to have to become more involved with their schools to help raise funds to offset cutbacks.

Exline said some parents already are mistakenly convinced that the board plans to eliminate programs or extracurricular after-school programs.

“The board’s philosophy is that it wants to shrink programs, not eliminate them,” he said.

Joe Estrella: 377-6465

By YANN RANAIVO
yranaivo@journalnet.com

POCATELLO —The community will have to step up to the plate if it wants its schools to continue offering the same level of education, said School District 25 superintendent Mary Vagner.

“In my 22 years as a school superintendent, I have never experienced a 20 percent reduction (in state funding) in a 12-month period,” Vagner told board members Tuesday evening. “The employees   (of the school district) have been compromised by the state Legislature.”

During a work session Tuesday, District 25 officials gave board members an indication of what next school year’s budget will likely be. District 25 faces nearly $7 million in state-imposed budget cuts next school year.

Of that $7 million, nearly $5 million will come from the 7.5 percent public schools budget cut that the state lawmakers approved earlier this year. The remainder of those reductions is expected to come from state-imposed holdbacks that could be mandated later this year.

“Multiple sources have advised the district to prepare for a 5.5 percent financial holdback,” she said.

Because the legislature has enacted a statewide fiscal emergency, school districts are empowered to re-negotiate employee contracts during the middle of the school year and impose salary cuts.

District 25 has identified $4.3 million that will be eliminated from next school year’s budget. School officials plan to shore up the remainder of next year’s budget cuts with across-the-board pay cuts.

The budget line items that school officials plan to either eliminate or reduce funding for include positions, mid-day bussing of kindergartners and health insurance.

The elimination of the mid-day bussing of kindergartners occurred after school officials decided earlier this year to run kindergarten all day on every other day. That move is projected to save the school district about $165,000 in transportation costs.

Two significant areas that District 25 will be hard-pressed to find funding for next school year are extracurricular activities and school resource officers.

This school year’s extracurricular activities   budget is approximately $1.1 million, but school officials expect to trim that by about $300,000.

Bart Reed, the school district’s director of business operations, said the school district plans to offset some cuts to extracurricular activities by reducing the use of charter buses for long-distance team travel and increasing participation fees.

District 25 has 4,135 students who participate in extracurricular activities, generating about $140,000 annually in participation fees.

As for the school resource officers, who are all Pocatello Police Department employees, the district is asking Pocatello to pick up the tab. Currently, District 25 and the city split the costs of placing seven officers in schools throughout the district. The school district pays about $190,000 annually for the officers.

“They do an awful lot for our community by keeping our schools safe,” Reed said, “but as we look at our budget, we have to eliminate the line item of $190,000. If (the city) cannot come up with those funds, we’ll still have school resource officers, but we won’t have as many.”

Vagner said the budget has been painful to look at because school officials know that it will affect employees   .

“Our people are the most important resources we have,” she said. “They’re the ones who are dealing with children, colleagues and parents. This community will have to step up to the plate to support our children and support our employees.”

Here’s a list of just some of the ways the cuts will hurt our kids, our schools, and our community:

• No New Textbooks
• Limited Classroom Supplies
• Districts may need to rely more on parents to furnish supplies
• Increased Class Sizes as a result of not replacing teachers who retire/leave the district
• Extracurricular activities will be limited and parents will likely be asked to fund more
• Fieldtrips will likely be limited or eliminated unless parents can fund them
• Loss of Programs
• In smaller districts, the elimination of one teacher can mean the loss of an entire program
• Fewer electives for middle/junior/high school students
• Possible restructuring of Kindergarten programs or complete elimination of Kindergarten programs, since it is not required by state law
• Sets the child back in education and may have a lasting affect on the child’s ability to perform
• Increased cost to parents for day care
• Loss of after-school programs
• More latchkey kids and more unsupervised time at home
• Loss of social interaction and enhanced learning
• Furlough days – direct impact on students and parents
• Increased daycare costs to parents
• Parents taking leave from work because they can’t afford daycare
• Some daycares don’t allow drop-ins or kids who just attend on individual days
• More kids left home alone
• No school breakfasts or lunch on furlough days
• Kids on free and reduced lunch will be added expense for already tight family budgets
• Kids less likely to eat nutritious meals
• Kids who want to apply to high powered colleges will be at a disadvantage from loss of programs, increased class size and decreased student contact time
• It’s likely that fewer advanced placement or dual enrollment classes will be offered to high school students wanting to obtain college credits to get a jump start on their college education
• High school students are already being encouraged to graduate from high school early to decrease the cost to school districts
• Early graduation may result in less time to obtain college credits and take classes that could help them perform better at the college level
• Districts will be forced to run a supplemental levy to fill the gap in what the state doesn’t provide
• Puts an additional burden on patrons in small districts with a high poverty rate rather than spreading the responsibility out across the state in other taxes and among people who are better equipped to pay them
• The state will be at an even greater disadvantage when it comes to attracting and retaining high quality teachers
• Programs, such as peer mentoring, cognitive coaching and reading coaching, that help less experienced teachers hone their skills to become better teachers, are unlikely to be funded
• Small businesses whose revenue relies heavily on high school students will feel the loss of students not attending school on furlough days
• In most communities, school districts are the largest employer. Lowering employee salaries decreases purchasing power thus affecting community businesses, sales and income taxes

– Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Top Reasons Businesses Give for Choosing One City Over Another:

1. Education, education, education.

2. Speeding up the permitting process and simplifying the bureaucracy.

3. The (un)importance of tax incentives.

— Source: Natalie Cohen, American Capital Access, in “Business Location Decision-Making and the City:

Bringing Companies Back,” published by the Brookings Institute, 2000.

“The most important factor in a company’s location decision is the availability and skill of the labor force. Other important factors include the cost and availability of land, the local infrastructure, the proximity to natural resources, the quality of life, and the proximity to universities or research institutions. Most studies found that, when deciding where to do business, businesses considered ease of incorporation, regulatory burdens, and tax burdens less important than those factors listed above.”

— Source: Colorado Legislative Council Staff

A July 2008 study of the causes of growth in the seven fastest growing countries in the world from 1960 to 2006 concluded there is “a robust relationship between public spending and GDP per capita growth.”

— Source: Assessing the Impact of Public Spending on Growth: An Empirical Analysis for Seven Fast Growing

Countries, the World Bank, July 2008

“In the New Economy, knowledge, rather than natural resources, is the raw material of business.”

— Source: The Importance of Quality of Life in the Location Decisions of New Economy Firms, U.S. Economic

Development Administration, 2002

“Contrary to traditional beliefs, the net national costs of government social programs are virtually zero… Contrary to the intuition of many economists and the ideology of many politicians, social spending has contributed to, rather than inhibited, economic growth.”

— Source: Peter H. Lindert, Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of California, Davis, Growing

Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth Since the Eighteenth Century.

BUHL — With February just around the corner it’s time again for the Popplewell Elementary School Math-a-thon in Buhl.

The yearly fundraiser that brought in nearly $40,000 last year provides critical dollars for sports and music equipment and classroom supplies.

As Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter and the Idaho Legislature consider cutting public school funding for the second straight year, grassroots fundraisers at the school district level may become an increasingly important piece of the funding picture. The state appropriation for schools had never decreased prior to fiscal year 2010,

“This fundraiser is very important because it helps supply classrooms with equipment we may not get otherwise,” Popplewell teacher Michael Rush said.

Funding from the math-a-thon has traditionally provided the school with extra equipment. But this year the money raised may be spent elsewhere, said PTN President April Jaynes.

“With cuts in funding expected down the line I suspect money raised could help cover the cost for things cut out by the school,” Jaynes said.

Schools around south-central Idaho face similar situations.

Gooding School District Superintendent Heather Williams said activities requiring transportation are always on the chopping block because the costs add up quickly.

She cites fundraising by parent-teacher organizations, private donations and a supplemental levy for providing funding for events such as field trips but said anything outside the realm of basic education costs “are on the chopping block.”

“We’re utilizing every source of funds we can,” Williams said.

Twin Falls School District Superintendent Willey Dobbs said the district is in conversation with its parent-teacher organization on how it can help cover costs for teacher supplies that may be eliminated by funding cuts.

“The cuts are a certain. We’re just not sure where the reductions will take place,” Dobbs said. “Without solid figures we’re not sure what will happen but the consensus is that things may change. For our district, we’re talking $300,000 in holdbacks (this fiscal year) and fundraising may be needed for some of the extras.”

Minidoka District Superintendent Scott Rogers said fundraisers aren’t going to solve district funding woes.

Rogers said schools need to learn to operate on slim budgets and be slow to asking residents for more money.

“If it’s tight for school districts it tight for families,” Rogers said. “The danger in increased fundraising is that it is essentially a tax shift.”

Rogers said his district is exploring creative ways to “weather the storm.”

“We’re looking at ways we can compress activities and programs, not eliminating them. For instance, maybe FFA doesn’t go to the national convention but to the state convention instead, or we decrease the number of traveling basketball games from 18 to 16,” he said. “We’re going to do all that we can to provide a solid education with opportunities but at the same time understanding that no one group can take the brunt of budget reductions.”

Even without increased fundraising Rogers said the district “is leaving no stone unturned,” in trying to find revenue sources and ways to cut spending.

Blair Koch may be reached at blairkoch@gmail.com or 208-316-2607.

I am a second year teacher in North Idaho. My wife and I are very frugal people.

• We are debt free and do not use credit cards.
• We heat with wood to avoid high electric bills.
• We do not have cable or satellite television because of the cost.
• I commute to work by bicycle to avoid high gasoline bills.
• We do not cover our daughter, who is almost 2 years old, on the health insurance plan the school district offers because it is too expensive to pay for three people. Instead, we have had to enroll her in Medicaid to ensure that she has suitable and affordable health care.
• We are enrolled in WIC so we can receive discounted (sometimes free) healthy food for our daughter that we otherwise could not afford.

In short, my wife and I do everything that we possibly can to minimize our expenditures (including relying on public aid programs) and still my salary of $2,081 a month is NOT enough to make our ends meet. 

If it were not for the $425 my wife earns each month by providing childcare to a family friend, we would not meet our monthly budget. 

I always hear of colleagues spending their own money on classroom supplies. I cannot even think of doing something like this for the benefit of my students, simply because I do not have the money to spend on them.

I would REALLY enjoy a “living wage.”