C-Falls crunches school budget

Columbia Falls School District 6 was expecting a budget shortfall for the 2009-2010 biennium, but the retirement of two veteran teachers and a speech/language pathologist has lessened the burden.

Trustees accepted the resignations of two longtime teachers at Glacier Gateway Elementary — Barbara Bocksnick, who teaches third grade, and Linda Layton in the second grade classroom. Alida Wright, a speech/language pathologist, is also retiring. She is in a .70 FTE (full time equivalent) position.

District Superintendent Michael Nicosia said at least four paraeducator positions will also be cut.

Those eight positions will not be filled, he indicated.

"We'll do all of it through attrition," Nicosia said.

Cut will be 3.2 FTE in the elementary district, and about .75 FTE in the high school district. That is the equivalent of four teaching positions.

Nicosia said contract negotiations with teachers for 2009-2010 went well, with a salary increase of just 1.25 percent. Montana case law dictates that teachers are allowed to progress through 'steps and lanes' based on experience, which means salary increases of about $75,000 total.

Classified staff in District 6 will receive a 2 percent pay increase.

"That speaks well of the commitment of our employees," Nicosia said.

WHEN MONTANA public school districts were hoping for an increase of about 3 percent in their budgets in terms of state money, all of them will get a lot less.

In Columbia Falls, the high school district gets an increase of 1.08 percent, or $58,354, according to Nicosia. The elementary district receives an increase of only .57 percent, or $55,734. Both increases are far from keeping up with inflation of more than 4 percent in operating costs.

"That doesn't even open the door to what we need," Nicosia said of the increases. "We've been in the cutting mode so long."

In May of 2008, a $69,608 mill levy for elementary general fund was passed and that will help keep the budget deficit to a minimum.

"We have parents who respect education. We have excellent teachers and kids do well," Nicosia said. But most Montana students don't have some of the opportunities that those in many other states have, such as foreign language offering before junior high age.

It looks like the district will avoid having to cut such things as textbook needs, but the money is very tight.

"We don't have a lot of money for line items. We're hoping to protect them," Nicosia said. "There is nothing extra there."

Money that districts receive from the state each year, through legislative appropriations, is based on enrollment. Student numbers in District 6 is holding its own, but every student in the classroom counts.

A NUMBER of proposed laws pertaining to education failed in the State House or Senate during the 2008-09 session of the Montana Legislature, and several others made the cut and were signed into law.

House Bill 512, an act increasing the limit on school district general fund reserves to provide for budget stability, did not make the cut.

The proposed bill would have allowed district trustees may designate up to 5 percent of the general fund end-of-the-year fund balance for budget stability purposes.

It passed in the State House on second reading by a 90-5 vote, but it missed the deadline for appropriations bill transmittal and died in standing committee two months later.

"I thought that was a sound piece of legislation," Nicosia said.

The bill would have allowed school districts to do some long-range planning.

"There were a number of bills that could have helped us operationally that didn't seem to make it," the superintendent said.

Nicosia and other administrators are enthused about the district's Learning Center, which has allowed for graduation of nearly 100 students over the last three school years.

"The regular high school setting is not for everybody," Nicosia said.

Stimulus money will allow the alternative programs to continue for another two years, he said.