By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
St. Joseph School District officials are looking to cut $8 million from the school budget in the next two years.
Assistant Superintendent of Business and Operations, Robert Hedgecorth, says the budget reserves have fallen to just over 10%, far short of the district goal of 20%.
Hedgecorth says it will take time to bring expenses down to get the reserves up.
“You can only cut so many purchase service and supplies costs. Seventy-five percent of our expenses are staffing expenses,” Hedgeworth tells KFEQmmunity, “because that is the bulk of our expenses. We are in the people business. You need to look for ways to reduce that staffing without affecting the classroom.”
Hedgecorth says the challenge is to reduce staff through attrition while maintaining quality classroom instruction.
“So, we’re trying to make sure that we look at that core classroom structure and when we evaluate positions, what are those things that are furthest from the classroom?” Hedgecorth explains. “And so that is kind of that rubric we’re looking at when someone might retire or resign to see if we need to refill that position.”
The St. Joseph Board of Education has approved $2.7 million in budget cuts for the current fiscal year. The total cut of $8 million will be spread over two years, according to Hedgecorth.
Superintendent Ashly McGinnis says the district will be looking to make staffing cuts across the board.
“And there may be some things as people resign or retire that we can consolidate positions into one,” McGinnis says. “And so, we are open to all of those ideas and want to brainstorm to make sure. Overall, we just have to become more efficient as a business as an organization and that’s our plan to do that.”
McGinnis says the district will look to cut positions across the board, from administration to custodial.
“We also picked up quite a few positions during COVID,” McGinnis says, stating the district attempted to use the money on intervention during the pandemic. “But then when that money dropped off, we picked up all of those positions locally. And so, we have increased the number of staffing, but we would look at that across-the-board to see where we have inefficiencies.”
The school board reversed course and decided to maintain the current three high school structure. Other buildings will close, though. Bode Middle School will close as the district consolidates four middle schools into three. Hyde Elementary School is scheduled to close as well. Other school buildings might follow. School officials say they will try to sell the properties, not just to make a little money off the sale, but to keep from having to maintain buildings it no longer uses.
Through all the talk of budget tightening, McGinnis wants to assure parents quality will be maintained as the district implements the Plan E adopted by the Board of Education.
“Kids are going to walk into our buildings and teachers and staff are still going to take care of kids throughout this whole process,” McGinnis states. “We have excellent staff and that’s our number one (priority), teaching and learning for our kids. That will remain a priority.”
The St. Joseph School District operates on a $182 million annual budget.
JOURNAL
You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ