Re-1 may face budget crunch next year

Re-1 may face budget crunch next year

May 3, 2001

JANET STORY is shown with her class of 13 second-graders at Downey Elementary School on Wednesday. Because of declining enrollment, her class and that of Diana Waggoner, who has 12 second-graders, will be combined next year.

By Aspen C. Emmett
Journal Staff Writer

If the Re-1 spring-break student count is any indicator, the Montezuma-Cortez School District will face a serious budget crunch next fall, said Superintendent Bill Thompson.

"We’re down 83 (students) compared to spring break last year," Thompson said. "This really affects our general fund because this next year, we will get $5,193 per student (in state funding)."

The monetary loss that would accompany such a decline in the district’s student population would exceed $431,000 and would inevitably cut into the personnel budget.

"If our count is way down, next spring is going to be tough, as far as we’re going to have to cut some people."

— Bill Thompson

The district has requested roughly $20.86 million in funding for the 2001-02 year.

"That’s where it impacts you the most is in your personnel. If you’re going to make any modifications, to really make any difference it’s got to be in personnel because that’s where 80 percent of your budget is," Thompson said.

The school board is not yet looking at cutting any programs but the possibility has not been ruled out.

"As you look at personnel, though, it eventually gets to programs. . . if you have to go far enough," Thompson said.

Downey, Kemper, Manaugh, Mesa, Pleasant View, and Lakeview elementary schools all showed a decrease in their student numbers, as did the Jump Start preschool and Montezuma-Cortez High School.

Lewis-Arriola Elementary held even. The only two schools showing an enrollment increase were Cortez Middle School and Beech Street Kindergarten.

Thompson said the immediate plan is to hold off on filling some positions vacated by retirement but, because the declining student numbers are scattered throughout the schools, eventually other avenues for "tightening up the belt" will have to be explored.

"Not every (position) that’s vacated will remain empty, because there’s some that are just a straight classroom position and you’ve got to have a teacher there for kids," he said. "That’s why that gets to be such a difficult process.

"You can’t just do away with a teacher because those numbers are spread out all over the place. If you lost 30 fourth-graders at Kemper, you could do away with that teacher, but when it’s three here, 10 over there and six here, you can’t just cut a teacher."

An obvious adjustment has presented itself at Downey Elementary, where there are 24 second-graders — a class that started out much larger and was split into two separate classes.

"This next year, that will be third grade and we’re going to go back to one teacher for that," Thompson said. "We’ve got a third-grade teacher retiring so one of those second-grade teachers will take that third-grade position."

Thompson said the district will also be looking at positions at the secondary level because it is often easier to make cuts in departments with several positions rather than one teacher instructing an entire grade level in an elementary school.

"If somebody’s retiring or going someplace else, you can just leave that position unfilled. It’s easier to do that when you’ve got multiple people in a department than it is when you’ve got one fourth-grade teacher," he said.

Recent census numbers indicate that Montezuma County’s population has grown 25 percent in the past 10 years, painting a puzzling picture in relation to public-school enrollment.

Thompson said numerous factors are coming into play, from charter schools and home-schooling to economic limitations and an increasing number of retired people.

"I think the numbers in the area are up, but I think home-schooling is up and I think there’s more students that are going to the private schools in the area."

Thompson said some parents may be reacting to the potential safety issues that they see in the public schools.

"Things we had like on the 13th and the 20th of April (when there were rumored threats of violence) sometimes incline people to do more home-schooling."

Home-school students are also supposed to be registered within their school district for accountability reasons but often elude the registration.

"I think there’s a lot of kids out there that are maybe on the census — they and their parents have moved here — and they’ve never even enrolled in our schools. They’ve home-schooled somewhere else and they just continue to home-school," Thompson said.

However, there are home-schoolers in the district that enroll in public school part-time so they can participate in sports or other extracurricular activities.

Thompson said in order for those students to participate they are required to enroll in enough classes to be considered half-time, thus allowing the district to collect half of the $5,193-per-pupil reimbursement from the state.

"We’d really like to do more of that if we can," he said. "We’ve been talking about reaching out to the home-school organizations here and talking to them about how we can jointly serve these kids."

Thompson also believes the local economy contributes to declining enrollment.

"I think one of the major factors that affects us is that we have people that move into Cortez and Montezuma County and find that unless they’re tourist-oriented, there’s really no way for them to make a living.

"I know that our numbers of people in Montezuma County are up over the last years, but I would guess that a large number of those are retirees or empty-nesters who are still doing business by fax and modem and don’t have kids."

A high amount of transferring in and out of schools keeps enrollment numbers unstable as well, he said.

"Our mobility factor at Kemper this year is between 30 and 40 percent. Almost 40 percent of the kids that started school there aren’t going to finish school there," Thompson said.

"Yet the numbers finishing the year are about the same as when they started. Some of it’s moving from one school to another in Cortez, but a lot of it is moving out and into the county."

High-school students are also graduating as early as their junior year because they are able to meet the 26-credit requirement in a short amount of time, reducing the number of students at MCHS, Thompson said.

"We’ve seriously looked at increasing graduation requirements. I think it’s something we need to look at — not just to keep the kids here and get the money — but to provide them more services before they go off to school or whatever they’re going to do."

Thompson said the district has made attempts in the past to project the number of incoming students for the next year, but it is still next to impossible.

"There have been times when I’ve used birth data in Montezuma County and projected that ahead for kindergarten," he said. "But we can’t even come close to projecting, even with that."

Thompson said the numbers may rebound by next fall but the district fully expects money to be tight, also figuring in a 30-percent increase in employee health-insurance costs.

"Hopefully our October count won’t be down as much as our spring-break count is, but we’re having to prepare for that.

"If our count is way down, next spring is going to be tough as far as we’re going to have to cut some people," he said.