Eddyville.Org

I had stated previously that I would be writing another blog on March 8 on the subject of moving the middle school and positive steps necessary to promote an increase of students in the school district.  Yesterday, there were too many other things going on, but I will write about these subjects sometime before the next school board meeting.

The school board met last night in a budget work session.  Dr. Cook gave a Power Point presentation on the proposed EBCSD budget that included various reductions in expenses which would result in savings of around $475,000.  The reporters for the Ottumwa Courier and the Albia Union-Republican papers were at the meeting and their news stories should be published in the next few days.  I probably will write my comments on that meeting on Friday or Saturday.

Last night’s discussion did not include any direct discussion of moving the middle-school nor were any cost savings of such a move included in the proposed budget that will be published in the paper in the next few days.  The schedule for future meetings was announced by Ed Glenn, the school board president, as follows: 

The next board meeting is scheduled for Monday, March 22, 2010 at the Blakesburg Middle School at 6:00 p.m.  A public hearing on the budget will be held at the start of the meeting.  After the public hearing, the board will vote on the budget.  Another work session or two will be held in early April to discuss other “possible” cost saving measures – primarily moving the middle school to Eddyville.  There may be one or two meetings on “possible” cost savings when the board will allow public input.  Then another meeting will be scheduled, perhaps at the board’s regular monthly meeting in April, where the board will vote on this issue.  

After weeks of discussion by the appointed 15-member Cost Savings Committee and after receiving the committee’s proposals, I was surprised that the issue of moving the middle-school was not discussed by the school board at last night’s meeting and included as part of the proposed budget for the coming fiscal year.  The initial proposal for moving the middle school was made by the school superintendent at the September school board meeting, five months ago.  If such a proposed move were to take place either this year or next year, it would certainly have a major financial impact on all aspects of the upcoming budget. 

A budget should be a realistic financial plan for the next year, and the public should be made aware of the plan prior to any public hearing on the budget.  That is the reason the state requires a public hearing on budgets – to allow public input and comment on the entire financial plan for the coming year.  It should not be a partial plan or an incomplete budget.

Below are tables showing the enrollment numbers for E-B school district by school building and by grade.  This will be followed by an explanation of what “Certified Enrollment” means and how it is determined. 

Blakesburg Elementary and  E-B Middle School (BAC)

(Highlight) – Normally, preschool enrollment is not counted for certification unless a child is 5 years old or part of a special education program.

*PS, 5yrs of age.

Eddyville Elementary School (EEAC)

(Highlighted) items not counted for certification.

*PS, 5 yrs of age            **IEP - Individualized Education Program

Eddyville-Blakesburg High School (EBHS)

Home School Assistance Program (HSAP)

Open Enrolled Students

Certified Enrollment for EBCSD – Approved by Iowa Department of Education

CERTIFIED ENROLLMENT generally applies to all K-12 resident students who reside within the district and attend EBCSD or who are open-enrolled in another public school district. Also, there are some other special cases that meet the state’s requirements for certified enrollment and some supplemental weighting for various programs which are too detailed for this brief report.  A good portion of the state funding/spending authority is based on the certified enrollment, and last year’s funding was around $5500 per student.

EBCSD has to pay for any of its K-12 resident students who are open-enrolled out of the school district into another school district; and the payment comes out of the funds the EBCSD district receives from the state for certified enrollment.  The reverse is true when a student who resides in another school district open-enrolls into the EBCSD.  Also, Fremont School District pays for its 9th, 10th, 11th and 12 grade students who are enrolled in the whole-grade sharing at the E-B High School (the rate of reimbursement is slightly less than 100% for certified enrollment).  The reimbursement rate for HSAP students who are open enrolled from other school districts is at 40%.

Comparison of student-teacher ratios among school districts is based on certified enrollment.  But a school can have many more students because of open enrollment or grade-sharing, etc. Below is a table of the actual students enrolled in K-12 at EBCSD as compared to the Certified Enrollment and the student-teacher ratios for both – the number of full-time teachers for the K-12 grade levels is 64:

*HSAP not included.

** This number does not include district students Open-Enrolled Out of the district (55), Home School students who live in the district (Weighted number of 6.4), and tuition-out students (6).  Adding these numbers into the CE will give the state approved certified enrollment of 695.4.  This would be a student ratio of 10.87.

Based on certified enrollment numbers, the average student-teacher ratio of schools with enrollments of 600 to 999 students is 13.5.  If this ratio were to be applied to the number of students actually enrolled in EBCSD K-12 classes, the number of teachers would be 54 as compared to the present 64. 

Tomorrow’s blog:  The issue of moving the middle school and positive steps necessary to promote an increase of students in the E-B Community School District.

At the last school board meeting, Dr. Cook, the Eddyville-Blakesburg School Superintendent, gave the following updated estimate of the reduced funding and increases in expenses which will have to be taken into consideration in preparing the 2010-2011 Eddyville-Blakesburg School District (E-B) Budget, as follows:

LOSS OF FUNDING DUE TO:

Reduction of students from last year’s enrollment.                                                $205,340

The State’s 10% Across the Board cut in funding.                                                 338,838

No renewal of funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment

Act (ARRA).  This was part of the federal stimulus program.                                  314,000

INCREASE IN EXPENSES

Misc. increases: Health Insurance (40%), IPERS (1.5%), etc.                                240,000

TOTAL ADJUSTMENT FROM 2009-2010 BUDGET                              $1,098,178

The school board’s appointed Cost Savings Committee has reviewed all the school’s major expenses and made several recommendations to the school board on ways to cut the budget, and many of these recommendations can be implemented over a period of time.  However, the major expense item is teacher pay and benefits, and the present number of teachers will have to be reduced to meet the budget requirements.

E-B offered an early retirement package this year to a total of six teachers/administrators. At the last school board meeting, it was announced that four teachers and one administrator accepted the offer, as follows:

Barb Lindenmayer – EEAC, 1st Grade Teacher

Cean McClenathan – HS Teacher/Librarian

David Whitver – HS Social Science/History Teacher

Tom Doyle – EEAC, Special Education Teacher

Dennis Rutledge – BAC/MS Principal

If none of these retiring members were to be replaced, this would be a savings in the “general fund” of $293,122 in wages per year (based on the total earnings report from 07/2008 – 06/2009).  Additional annual savings would include health insurance cost of $34,570; and IPERS of $19,493.  This would amount to a grand total of $347,185.

Since there needs to be a principal at the BAC & MS, this position will need to be filled.  Whether this can be done internally with some shuffling of teachers would have to be determined by the school administration.  The same applies to the four retiring teacher positions.  Some replacements may have to be hired and the savings would not be as great as indicated.  In any case, there will have to be further cuts in the number of teachers to meet the required reduction in the budget.  Over the past 10+ years, there has not been a proportional reduction of teachers as the enrollment of students declined.

What is an appropriate student-teacher ratio or how does E-B compare to other schools in the state of Iowa?  I had discussed this question in my last blog.  Since then, I have found additional information in The Iowa Department of Education publication: “The Condition of Education Report.” This annual report gives a detailed analysis of the status of education and statistical comparisons of schools in Iowa. The following is a comparison of K-12 pupil-teacher ratios for Iowa Public Schools by enrollment category for 2008-2009 (Table 39 of the Department’s Report):

Enrollment                    Number of                    Number of

Category                        Students                  FTE Teachers                  Ratio

<300                            10,212                         1,045.7                          9.8

300-599                       50,676                         4,172.4                        12.1

600-999                       65,464                         4,891.8                        13.4

1,000-2,499                 118,534                       8,790.5                        13.5

2,500-7,499                 94,104                         6,479.7                        14.5

7,500+                         131,573                       9,073.5                        14.5

State                            470,563                       34,453.5                      13.7

E-B has a certified enrollment of 695 students.  If the average student-teacher ratio of 13.4 was used for this number of students, E-B would have 52 (K-12) teachers.  However, E-B presently has 64 teachers and a student-teacher ratio of 10.86.  Is E-B overstaffed?  There could be arguments on this issue both pro and con, but in comparison to other schools in Iowa, it is. 

The salaries for E-B teachers range from $26,450 to $62,150.  The median salary is $38,088. In addition, a number of teachers receive supplemental pay for various extracurricular activity assignments.  Benefits include insurance (single coverage) at $5319 per year and IPERS at 6.65% of total wages.

If twelve teaching positions were eliminated or absorbed by other teachers, how much could be saved?  It would depend on the mixture of the positions as far as salaries, seniority, etc.  But if the twelve lowest paid teaching positions were eliminated, the minimum annual savings would be: 

Salaries -          $340,676

Health Ins. -         63,822

IPERS -               22,655   

Total                 $427,153  

This total savings is less than half of the amount that Dr. Cook said would have to be accounted for in the budget for 2010-2011.  As mentioned earlier, there are also other potential Cost Savings which were proposed by the Cost Savings Committee at the last School Board Meeting including moving the middle school to Eddyville.   

 Fortunately, as Dr. Cook pointed out, the school does have a large cash reserve and unspent budget authority which can be used to absorb some of the reduction in the budget.  The School Board will be holding a work session in the school’s Administration Office on Monday, February 8, 2010 at 6:00 p.m. to prepare the budget.  If you are interested in learning more about the school’s proposed budget cuts, this would be a good meeting to attend.  The proposed budget has to be published at least 10 days prior to a public hearing.  And the public hearing will be scheduled for the School Board’s regular board meeting on Monday, March 22, 2010 at 6:00 p.m. at the Blakesburg Middle School.

Major and significant cuts are going to have to be made in the 2010-2011 budget of the Eddyville-Blakesburg School District (E-B).  How much will have to be cut?  No one seems to have a definite answer to that question at this point in time.  It appears there will be a major reduction of state funding of $338,000 or possibly more; a loss of funding of $208,000 due to a decline in student enrollment in the past year and a projected loss of $58,000 for the following year due to a continuing decline of enrollment; and an end to the funding that was received last year through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  In addition to the major losses in funding, the cost of employee benefits will increase significantly:  health insurance is expected to cost an additional 30% to 40%; and the retirement plan, IPERS, will increase another 1.5%.  Altogether, E-B may be forced to reduce costs and/or make up a difference of anywhere from $400,000 to $800,000.

The major reduction in funding is the bad news.  But the good news is that E-B, unlike some other school districts, is presently in good shape, financially, with cash on hand and unspent budget authority.  This positive balance or reserve will help ease the reductions and may allow a transition period of two or three years to make the necessary adjustments, but this will be dependent on the economy, state funding and student enrollment.  The Cost Savings Committee has considered various proposals for reducing expenses.  Brian Chambers, a committee member, said that significant reductions will have to be made, but they shouldn’t be made all at once.  There are many school districts facing the same type of situation and he believes that the State is going to have to do something to help these schools in the future.

The Committee has looked at many cost saving proposals including the proposal of moving the middle school to Eddyville.  But as Dave Friedman, a school board member, stated at the board’s meeting in January: whether the middle school is moved or not, the major cost savings will have to come from a reduction in the number of teachers.  

In fact, it appears that there should have been more of a reduction of teachers in the past as student enrollment declined over the years.  For example, the number of students at the start of this past decade (October 2000) was at 833 and by October 2009 it had dropped to 695 – a loss of 138 in student enrollment; whereas, the number of full-time teachers only declined by five, from 69 to 64.  In the past year alone, there was a drop in the certified enrollment of 36 students, but the number of teachers remained the same.

Much of the state funding, which is presently around $5800 per student, is based on the school’s “certified enrollment.”  In addition, the enrollment number is also used by the State to determine the “spending authority,” which limits how much money the school can spend directly on education under the “general fund” category of the budget.   In other words, even though some schools are “cash rich,” they cannot add any more of their tax dollars to the “general fund” than what the State authorizes.  The “general fund” includes such items as teacher and staff wages, employee benefits, services and supplies, student transportation, school maintenance, etc.  The major expense items under the “general fund” category are for teachers’ wages and benefits.  Therefore, it is necessary to adjust the number of teachers in proportion to the student enrollment to stay within the spending authority allowed by the State.

How does the student/teacher ratio compare to other schools?  The Iowa Department of Education publishes an annual “Public School and AEA Teacher Information Report” which includes data on all of the 361 Public School Districts in Iowa.  The latest report was for the school year of July 2008 – June 2009, and during that year the E-B certified enrollment was listed at 731 and the number of teachers at 64.  Below are some school comparisons of student teacher ratios based on the figures in this report:

                                    Student -

School                          Teacher

District                         Ratio

E-B                              11.42

Pekin                            13.73

Oskaloosa                    14.74

Ottumwa                      14.48

Albia                            13.93

The average student-teacher ratio for all of the 361 school districts in the State of Iowa is 13.95 students per teacher.

If the state-wide ratio was applied to E-B’s certified enrollment of 731, then the district would have 52.40 teachers instead of 64.  (731 divided by 13.95 = 52.40)

But as of October 2009, the E-B’s certified enrollment dropped to 695.  Therefore, if the state-wide ratio was applied to this lower number, the district would have 49.82 teachers.

How does E-B compare to schools of similar size and enrollment?  The Iowa “2008-2009 Public School and AEA Teacher Salary Report” lists all the school districts by size or enrollment number.  The report shows last year’s figures; but if the current E-B certified enrollment of 695 is inserted in that listing, the average of the student-teacher ratio for the next ten higher and the next ten lower schools in enrollment would be 13.21 as versus the state-wide ratio of 13.95.  Using the lower ratio number for E-B’s certified enrollment of 695 would give a result of 52.61 teachers as compared to 49.82 teachers using the state-wide ratio. 

Based on the above comparison to other schools throughout the State and to schools of similar size, it appears that E-B could reduce its number of teachers by as much as 12 for the 2010-2011 school year.  With this number of reductions, there would be a total of 52 full-time teachers and an average of 13.37 students per teacher.