Kalispell voters to consider $1M levy

By HILARY MATHESON

Daily Inter Lake

Kalispell School District voters on May 8 will consider a $1 million elementary-district general-fund levy.

Budget cuts combined with the levy and some one-time money would cover a $1.5 million budget shortfall and prepare for 2018, when Rankin Elementary School will open and add to district’s bottom line in overall operation and maintenance costs.

“A levy is operational dollars. It’s the meat and potatoes. It’s the dollars that run our schools on a day-to-day basis,” Kalispell Superintendent Mark Flatau said during a presentation to the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce Tuesday afternoon explaining that bonds are solely used to fund capital improvements such as building or remodeling a new school.

If approved, the elementary levy will raise annual property taxes by about $50.37 for a home valued at $200,000.

The Kalispell Public School trustees who represent the elementary district voted 4-1 to put the levy on the ballot during a board meeting Tuesday evening. School board chairman Lance Isaak opposed, saying he felt $1 million wasn’t enough after reviewing the budget and cuts.

Two other trustees representing the elementary district were not at the meeting.

Trustees also considered a high-school district levy, but it was ultimately a unanimous decision not to ask for one.

“We can probably get another year down the road without a high-school levy. We will have to tap into some interlocal agreement funds,” said Gwyn Andersen, the district’s director of business services, noting that the high school budget also benefited from a bump in enrollment.

The school district is also moving forward with recommended budget cuts for this school year and in the 2018-19 school year.

The district began preparing to tighten its belt back in March 2017, when Andersen presented the 2017-18 preliminary budget and projected shortfalls.

Beginning in January 2018, dozens of administrators and directors began meeting in efforts to drill down on what could be reduced, going through more than 6,000 line items according to Glacier High School Principal Callie Langohr. Langohr helped oversee the process, making sure continual progress was made and that topics or questions didn’t fall by the wayside.

“We needed to make sure we didn’t do any harm, that we truly looked at things from the right perspective, that we took care of people — took care of students. We needed to admit things [such as]: Yes, maybe there’s an area we can cut,” Langohr said.

The team surpassed initial budget reduction goals realizing it would be advantageous to do so going into the 2018-19 school year.

This school year, reductions in the elementary district will total $353,024, and in the high school district, $360,374.

For the 2018-19 school year, $323,776 will be cut from the elementary district budget. The high school district budget will be reduced by $505,917.

Reductions impact a variety of areas such as curricula, maintenance, summer school, field trips, travel, athletic and activity stipends, professional services and consultants, equipment purchases, substitutes and overtime.

“On the curriculum side, we looked at some textbook adoptions and things that we are just going to have to postpone,” Flathead High School Principal Michele Paine said. “Those are hard decisions to make.”

Teaching jobs aren’t among the cuts, although staff salaries and benefits represent a large chunk of the general fund budget. Some positions may be reduced by not filling vacancies as people retire or resign.

“There’s a lot of research that it’s the quality of the people that make a difference in education,” Paine said. [The] single best impactor on student achievement is quality instruction. You could argue that, well, do curriculum materials help you get quality instruction? Well, yes, right, but people who are competent, knowledgeable and do their jobs well are valuable.”

The reductions allow the district not to dip into interlocal funds as deeply as previously thought. The interlocal fund contains remaining end-of-year money from both the elementary and high-school districts. Interlocal funds may be spent for any purpose with board action.

“These budget reductions are reducing our dependence on these savings accounts, [which typically contain one-time money],” Andersen said,

When the 2017-18 school year started over budget, trustees had authorized approximately $1 million from the high school district and $355,000 from the elementary district in the interlocal fund to cover expenses rather than seek a levy. Based on the cuts, a significantly smaller amount is required — roughly $640,000.

The cuts aren’t sustainable; however, neither is using one-time money to cover recurring expenses according to Flatau and Andersen, with other administrators in agreement.

The cause of the budget shortfall is primarily a combination of state-funding reductions and health-insurance costs in the district’s self-funded plan.

The district is undergoing a state-funding reduction of $687,294 over the 2017-18 and 2018-19 school years. That amount represents about 1.1 percent of the school district’s budgeted funds, which total $62.1 million.

The state-funding and block-grant reductions impact areas such as data for achievement (used for state testing costs), transportation, special education, at-risk students, building reserve, career and technical education.

In the spring of 2017 a $725,000 loan was floated to the district’s self-funded insurance program using interlocal money to cover a deficit. The deficit resulted in underestimated cost projections to cover claims, premium prices and how the insurance plan was managed. The loan is expected to be paid back over time. Changes have been made to the plan in management, increasing employee contributions and working toward building reserves.

Voters living in the elementary district will also be asked on the May ballot to give the district permission to purchase a 12-acre parcel north of Kalispell as a future elementary-school site. The plan is to purchase the land using interlocal funds.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.