MINIDOKA COUNTY, Idaho — Leaders with a local school district were late to look at this year's finances, and just recently realized they're short for next year.
Tonight, they're trying to get a handle on the issue. The district called a special meeting before its regular school board meeting.
The board will consider whether or not the district needs to declare a financial emergency. The district let residents know about the special meeting four days ago, which came as a surprise to some.
Because of new roles and staffing changes, their budget was turned in late, Superintendent Spencer Larsen told KTVB.
A financial report wasn't given to the school board until late April, he said. Which reveals the district is somewhere between $4.5 and $5 million short for the next school year.
That's because of lower enrollment numbers, as well as other state funding they won't be receiving anymore.
The district already made a number of staffing cuts in April, Larsen said. Some of those were through attrition from retirements. But most of the cuts were in the classroom.
"The money that we're short... the loss in revenue that we'll be seeing isn't from... somebody taking the money and just having it disappear," he said. "It's revenue that we know, or the district should have known we'd be losing. And, unfortunately, maybe didn't account for it soon enough."
If the district declares a financial emergency at tonight's meeting the next step would be staff negotiations over salaries and benefits.
Instead, Superintendent Larsen said he will suggest additional staffing cuts be made to solve the deficit.
"Any educator would be able to tell you that a teacher in the classroom, an effective teacher has a greatest impact on student achievement and student learning," he said. " And rarely, that holds true of people in general staff. They make our schools operate. And so having to cut staff to hit a certain budget number is really tough."
Larsen declined to provide how many additional positions that includes. He says he'd like to make that number public at the meeting tonight.
The exact number of positions that could be cut, won't be formally decided on until sometime next month, although which positions those have already been discussed internally.
It includes more staffing cuts in the classroom, and other district staff, he said. Ultimately that will result in lager classroom sizes and less help.
If the board doesn't declare a financial emergency, the board will make final decisions on which positions would be cut at a meeting in June.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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