CASCADE, Idaho -- Rural school districts in Idaho are struggling with funding right now, particularly as their enrollments continue to drop.
On Thursday night, we saw that struggle playing out in Cascade where the district needs to make cuts and is talking about laying people off. No matter how the Cascade School District decides to stop deficit spending, they'll be cutting from somewhere. But leaders say they're trying to do it with minimal impact on students.
This rural mountain community is facing some less than ideal circumstances: a struggling tourist-based economy, low-paying service jobs, a tough housing market. Thus, two years ago, there was a mass exodus of students from the school district.
Cascade School District Superintendent Pal Sartori says rather than cutting staff when they probably should have, they dipped into their reserve fund, which is made up of federal forest dollars. At this point, the school board and district say they won't be fiscally responsible if they continue down this road.
They are looking at cuts across the board: from supplies to programs, to staff and teachers. The idea of what's called a 'Reduction in Force (RIF)' was tossed around in January, and then we are told by teachers the potential for layoffs faded away. That was until the plan came up in last Thursday's routine yearly negotiation meeting between the Cascade Education Association and the school district.
"These are teachers with years - sometimes decades - of experience. They have had no advance warning, no time to make an alternative plan," Cascade Education Association chief negotiator, Cascade School District tech director and bus driver Chris Hinze told the superintendent and a school board member during Thursday's meeting, "They have set down roots in this community, they own homes in this community and now they are utterly going to be cast loose with very few prospects for employment. That is unconscionable!"
"So now we are at a point where we have to, you know, make some decisions on how to try to balance the budget. And I look at it and say, unfortunately the State of Idaho doesn't provide the type of funding that we would like to see in schools. But when your enrollment declines you only get x amount according to how many kids you have. So it's a tough proposition," Superintendent Sartori told KTVB.
"If kids are as important as everybody keeps saying they are, then our state Legislature needs to be willing to fund the education so it doesn't have to come to a supplemental levy," Cascade Education Association President, social studies teacher, coach and eighth-grade advisor Adam Mapp said. "And in my opinion it is unfair to the people of Idaho that we have to continue to pass supplemental levies in almost all of our districts so that we can provide the education that we feel is necessary for our kids. And we are being told that it is important but it is not being funded like it is."
The teachers union was tasked last week with helping the district come up with alternative solutions to reduction in force and present those during Thursday's meeting. They proposed another asking voters to pass another supplemental levy, not filling art and music positions (the two teachers currently teaching those subjects are leaving), perhaps a four-day school week and furlough days as alternatives to save money.
Hinze and Mapp asked the school board to hold a special meeting soon to come up with a proposal to keep staff whole and balance the budget.
This situation is a tangible example of the reality of rural Idaho, as small, low-funded school districts fight the uphill battle to provide quality education.