Pinckneyville High School faces $600,000 budget deficit
The PCHS Board of Education is expected to place the 2014-2015 budget on file at their July 28 meeting. The budget projects an overall deficit of nearly $600,000, the majority of that ($483,000) in the Education Fund.
Payments for benefits and salaries, various insurances and other services such as special education payments to Tri-County are made from the education fund. Approximately 80 percent of the funds that pass through the education fund are for salaries and benefits.
Superintendent Keith Hagene said that the district has been able to stop the depletion of reserves for most of the school's funds. The only fund in danger of being depleted in the coming year is the education fund.
Since 2010, the district has reduced the number of certified staff by nine teachers (22.5 percent), saving nearly $1.5 million in salaries and benefits in that time. The projected savings for the coming school year is approximately $500,000.
Most of the reductions are through attrition, but this year the board did eliminate the one remaining Ag teacher position.
Ag had the lowest enrollment of the remaining vocational programs. Students still have Business, Industrial Education, Family and Consumer Science and Music classes from which to choose.
"We're trying to be lean, we're trying to be efficient," Hagene said. "We're trying to make moves that provide the highest level of education we can."
The reduction in staff will result in larger class sizes in some instances, which isn't a desired outcome, but can't be avoided.
"If you had 20 students in a class and you eliminate that class, those students have to go somewhere," Hagene said.
It is important to the community that students receive the best possible education, making PCHS a place where parents want to send their children.
PCHS, along with other entities in Perry County, is working to make this an economically viable area through programs such as the Perry County CEO program.
PCHS has worked with Dist. 50, CCSD 204 and St. Bruno to determine the most efficient bus routes. At present, no road is traveled twice. Students are picked up by the bus that travels their road, travel to that bus's school and switch to a new bus there to get to their destination.
The division of roads has resulted in fuel savings for the district. Likewise, scheduling changes have helped reduce electricity costs by 15 percent.
The district finished the previous budget year, which ended June 30, 2014 with a deficit of only $350,000 instead of the projected $600,000.
The $250,000 in reduced deficit was due to extreme frugality in every category.
"We have zero athletic budget, we have zero classroom budgets," Superintendent Hagene said. "There are small expenditures for some extra-curricular activities, but most are covered by gate receipts or fund-raising."
Hagene is working to shave an additional $540,000 from the coming year's budget.
The budget numbers are tentative and are based on the same General State Aid (GSA) funding level as the previous school year through December. The state has passed only a six-month maintenance budget and is expected to offer GSA at the same level through the end of this calendar year.
State law says that it takes $6,119 to educate each child in Illinois. General State Aid, which is supposed to make up the difference between the local funds generated through real estate taxes and the desired $6,119 per child, has been funded at 87 percent for the past year.
PCHS generates about half of the $6,119 through the tax levy, which is not growing at a pace to offset the state cuts.
The formula to determine the $6,119 cost per child has not been updated in many years. When taking into consideration inflation or using the Consumer Price Index, that figure would be closer to $8,300 per child, Hagene said.
While the GSA formula has been debated at length this year, Hagene said the bottom line is that for a district the size of Pinckneyville, the proposed changes would not be significant.
A projected increase in enrollment from 425 students to 457 students is expected to have an impact. The state will use the 2013-2014 enrollment figures to make payments in the coming school year. This year, for the first time in many years, the state made a fourth payment to schools. PCHS received a total of $65,000 ($39,000 in two transportation categories and $26,000 in two special education categories).
The state frequently fails to make the fourth payment for the year and the budget numbers don't anticipate a fourth payment in the 2014-2015 school year.
Times have only gotten tougher.
Over the past six years, PCHS has lost about $2.3 million in General State Aid. "This isn't a problem that can be fixed locally," Hagene said.