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Re-1 approves $27 million budget

Oct. 12, 2000

By Janelle Holden
Journal Staff Writer

After unanimously passing this year’s budget, the Re-1 school board debated the dollars and cents of retaining top-quality teachers and administrators at their Tuesday special meeting and work session.

"It’s our intent to make people happy with as much as we’ve got to make them happy with," said school board President Steve Hinton.

The only formal action the board took at the meeting was to adopt a $27 million budget for the 2000-01 school year. As an added bonus, this year’s budget included $356,000 in unexpected funding from an increase in enrollment and state mandates for inflation increases.

A large chunk of this money, $210,000, was used to offset some of the $700,000 in expenses carried over from the previous fiscal year. Anticipating an increase in the prices of natural gas, the district allocated $71,000 more for this expenditure. In addition, they added $50,000 to the technology fund, and $25,000 for new textbooks.

The largest budget items included the general and capital reserve funds, grants, and charter schools.

In total, the district adopted close to $20 million for general-fund uses, and $1.2 million for the capital-reserve fund. In addition, the school allocated $235,427 for the activities, and $980,454 for food service. This year the district will spend $1,752,000 in miscellaneous and governmental grants.

The district’s charter high school, Southwest Open School, is taking $1,256,962 out of the budget and Battle Rock is budgeted for $163,756.

Before approving the budget, the board met with the staff salary committee. The committee recommended the board approve a 3.5 percent across- the-board increase for inflation, and add $1,500 to the base salary of certified and administrative staff and $1,200 for support staff’s base salary in the next fiscal year.

They also recommended reactivating a committee to study health-insurance options, and asked the board to either increase the number of accumulated sick days from 60 to 90, or pay $50 a day for any unused sick days over 60.

The board also discussed changing the way administrators’ salaries are determined. Many of the members expressed an interest in negotiating salaries with administrators rather than doling them out based on a determined rate of pay, or salary schedule.

"I think that it’s more professional for administrators to have a dialogue about their salary with the board," said Susan Baacke.

Superintendent Bill Thomp-son warned that if the board didn’t take action, some administrators would leave. He said that assistant principals at metropolitan Front Range schools are making more than district principals in Cortez.

These concerns were echoed by board member Tina Galyon.

"I think we can only try, because if we don’t do something different we’re going to lose good people," Galyon commented.

Hinton warned that board members would have to put in more time and effort to the process if they decided to negotiate salaries.

"It’s going to take some dedication and willingness on the board’s part to deal with these people one-on-one," said Hinton.

Assistant Superintendent George Shumpelt asked the board to consider an educator’s perspective who may have a "missionary" outlook on their job.

"Educators are not working for the money," he said.

"In business you’re working with empirical things, and products that can be measured, but when you’re working with kids, and you’re working with parents it’s a very different matter."

The board discussed creating an evaluation system for administrators, without adding "40 more hours of paperwork a week," to their work loads.

Thompson said that the board would also have to consider salary rates that they could advertise to attract prospective administrators.

Hinton asked board members to think of concerns and questions that they might have before they decide the issue on Oct. 24.