WBCSD dips into contingency funds for 2020-2021 budget

PRIEST RIVER — Due to Governor Brad Little’s 5-percent holdback on education funding, West Bonner County School District officials said the district looking at a shortfall of $139,000 for the 2020-2021 school year.

WBCSD staff will present the amended budget to the board in June and will be revised if there are substantial changes needed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Determined to save money, district officials considered alternative solutions as small as copying paper double-sided at Wednesday’s budget meeting.

“We don’t track our paper usage for school,” Clerk Jennifer Anselmo said. “I hope we will never have to get to that again, it was not fun, but each school has an allocation of so many boxes and they stay within their boxes.”

To put it into perspective, the state only budgets $12,000 for copy paper which has led WBCSD to temporarily use $4,000 out of the $17,000 extra funds from the math curriculum budget to cover remaining costs. This solution was brought forth by the math department because their program often prints packets for students.

Other solutions presented at the May 27 meeting to curb the 5 percent holdback included using surplus money from an old levy to fill a $41,000 Career and Technical Education salary.

“Years ago we didn’t get state funding for advanced opportunities like we do now,” Anselmo said. “Now the students get a big chunk for advanced opportunities so it used to be funded through levies so that $41,000 was sitting there. We have attempted to use it throughout the years, we tried to hire a nurse to do a nursing program and some of these different things.”

This is a one-year fix to move one of the district’s CTE salaries to those dollars as opposed to utilizing general funds. WBCSD has had to cut some staff during the pandemic, but Anselmo has been actively looking for opportunities to push funds around in order to make more room for staff.

“The first thing we did was look at our contract loans and how many open positions we have, so how many people we can actually bring back,” Anselmo said. “I moved like half of one of our counselors pay to another funding (source) with a little bit of a surplus there and that would help the general fund out. I literally did everything I could think of.”

Although WBCSD has a contingency fund of over $1.4 million, there are a number of facility projects that were high need and high risk to budget for the school year. Anselmo estimated around $750,000 already accounted for, leaving the district nervous to spend more money than necessary, given the unpredictable nature of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The thing is I am scared about what’s going to happen next year. I keep telling people I’d rather come back and give more money next year after I know we are going to be OK then give away too much now and be in a predicament because I think there is a high possibility we could look at another increase from the state,” Anselmo said. “I am just grateful that we have a contingency fund, there are a lot of other districts that have had to use a lot of theirs to some degree.”

In response to the holdback, some big budget decreases included a 50 percent cut for technology employee funding and a $45,000 cut on transportation costs. State reimbursements for transportation operate on a by-the-mile program, which was largely effected by premature closure of schools.

The district’s 2020-2021 budget is also proposing an increase in substitute teacher pay.

“I cleared out the sub accounts when the year closed early but we need real normal subs. We can’t budget for less, that would be suicidal,” Anselmo said.

An increase of $40,000 will also go toward special service professionals, which will include a school psychologist. The school is also budgeting for a librarian.

Superintendent Paul Anselmo said he has major concerns about starting school in the fall, particularly where funding for personal protective equipment will come from, if necessary, and where the district stands with coronavirus relief funds under the CARES act.

There have been no decisions made at the state or federal level, nor has there been guidance for budgeting for the 2020-2021 school year. For now, relief funds have been lumped into the contingency funds.

Aly De Angelus can be reached by email at adeangelus@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @AlyDailyBee.