The school district has a plan to help close next year’s budget gap: It will use federal funds from last year’s American Rescue Plan Act to cover the salaries of new elementary school and middle/high school principals rather than continue the practice of paying for a lead teacher/assistant principal out of general budget funds.
At a school board meeting last Wednesday, Tammy Stromberg, the district’s business manager, went through the first draft of the 2022-2023 budget, explaining how switching the funding for the principals — and eliminating the positions of lead teacher — would help cover much of the deficit in the initial draft budget for next school year.
Expenditures in the initial draft budget totaled $5.1 million against revenues of $4.7 million.
“Payroll takes up nearly 80% of our general fund expenditures,” Stromberg said while going over the draft budget. Teacher salaries comprise about two-thirds of all wages, with employee benefits bringing total payroll costs to about $4 million for the 2022-2023 school year.
Bob Davis will retire at the end of this school year from the position of assistant principal and lead teacher of the high school and middle school, and the district will leave his job unfilled — as it will for the similar position at the elementary school — replacing both with full-time principals.
“The lead teacher positions are going away and the cost savings in the budget is because we are paying the (elementary, middle and high school) principals out of a grant,” said Bill Burr, superintendent of schools. “(There will be) no loss of staffing.”
Jenn Miller-Yancey, lead teacher and assistant principal of Evergreen Elementary School, said teaching positions for next year will depend on what’s needed in the classroom.
“The lead teacher/assistant principal position I am filling started out as a one-year, fill-in contract addendum for the 2019-20 school year due to the second principal at Evergreen in two consecutive years leaving before the school year was even out,” Miller-Yancey said. “(The school) needed stability and staff and administration at the time felt this was the best way to solve the problem.”
She said the model worked so well that she and Davis were offered the same contract the next two years.
“As for what anyone will be doing next year, myself included, will be up for discussion and decision making depending on the resources we have available compared to the needs identified,” Miller-Yancey said. “Contracts are usually offered first, followed by configuration and placements. I feel each year we’ve had to get more and more creative with our staffing. I don’t see planning for FY23 being any different.”
Stromberg said the budget will be revised at the next school board meeting set for 6:30 p.m. Feb. 28. The school district has to forward its budget to the borough by May 1.
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