RCAS looking for cuts, bracing for more bad news

by Peter Jakey, Managing Editor

With the Rogers City Area Schools? planning and finance committee ready to convene last week, local school officials were stunned again with the news of possibly more funding cuts to their per pupil foundation grant. The committee was set to discuss the $165 pro-ration from the 2009-10 budget, or about $95,000 less, before Monday?s regularly scheduled workshop session, when word of Gov. Jennifer Granholm?s threat to take another $127-per-pupil away from districts because of a need to cut $212-million from the aid to schools budget. Superintendent Jamie Huber said that would amount to another $73,000.

Republicans say Granholm is putting pressure on them for a tax increase and another source of revenue to offset a drop in state tax revenues. Huber, at Monday?s workshop meeting, told the board they are dealing with the $95,000 loss first, ?because that?s what we know is real.? BOARD OF education president Mike Marx said, ?It?s kind of tough coming up with numbers right off the bat. What our main focus was?what percentage of fund equity do we attempt to maintain.?

The committee?s consensus is to maintain a 15 percent fund equity, or about two months of operating money. ?The problem with this, and it?s nothing new with everything going on in the state, is we are 100 days into our school year. We have budgeted ?X? amount of dollars to educate our kids and we?re not going to get ?X? amount of dollars.? Marx added that maintaining 15 percent will be ?tricky? but it?s something the committee wants to continue. Absorbing $95,000 from the fund equity would bring it to 13.6 percent.

No decisions or recommendations have been brought before the board as the superintendent, the administrative staff and board members comb through the budget to find areas to trim. Huber also has sent e-mails to staff soliciting ideas. In the meantime, a spending freeze on any non-essential items or projects has been enacted by the superintendent. ?If it?s new and you haven?t done it before?then now is probably not the time,? said Huber.

Board member Lee Gapczynski said the cuts would have to come from wages and benefits, which account for 93 percent of the budget. ?IT?S A TWO percent cut,? said Gapczynski. ?I wish that?s all I had in my business is a two percent cut. I just say we have to deal with it. Whatever it takes. I think we have to go back to the drawing board and start from there. What can we afford?? The board started the new fiscal year, $178,000 in the red, compounding the situation. Fellow board member Armand Loiselle, a member of the planning and finance committee, believes an analysis of a possible consolidation with Posen Consolidation School (PCS) needs to be carefully taken into consideration. ?Is it a program that actually saves money?? he said.

Later in the meeting, when reviewing the master plan, Loiselle said his revised list of priorities includes the possible annexation and/or consolidation of PCS at the top. ?That is something as a board,? said Loiselle, ?we ought

to be public about it, and I think in it?s own time will eventually take place anyways.? The other major consideration he wants in the master plan is Wolverine Power and the impact it could have.

?In both scenarios,? Marx said, ?Rogers City Schools doesn?t have an influence. Whether or not Wolverine Power is going to be here is not up to Rogers City Area Schools. We have no control over that. Same with Posen schools. What Posen schools do in the near future, that?s up to Posen schools, to be quite honest with you. In five years we are going to know if both of those scenarios are going to take place.?

State superintendent Mike Flanagan was calling for consolidation of services in a press release Monday as well as a focus on the new three ?R?s? of education as a solution to the crisis: revenues, reforms and reductions. The next board of education meeting is November 9.

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