KEOKUK, IA. -- The Keokuk School Board is preparing to make some tough decisions for the upcoming school year.
Due to state budget cuts and less money because of declining student enrollment, the district is looking at a loss of almost a million dollars next year. At the same time, salaries, health insurance and other costs keep going up.
Why do these cuts have to be made?
Keokuk Superintendent Dr. Lora Wolff said, "We have declining enrollment of 116 students and that's how our money is figured."
That means to stay in the black for the upcoming school year, $992 thousand has to disappear from the budget. This is how administrators like Dr. Wolff plan to do it.
- Kid Zone, the district's before- and after-school program will be eliminated to save $130 thousand a year. The district hopes to salvage the program with state and federal grants. Word on that won't come until later this spring.
- Big cuts will be felt at Keokuk High School. The board is considering eliminating two high school teaching positions in math and language arts. A high school social studies teacher on leave this year won't be replaced. Another position will go from full- to part-time, saving a total of $246 thousand.
- Other big cuts will be felt at Keokuk's elementary schools. Because of fewer students, the district will eliminate a kindergarten and first grade class at Hawthorne elementary, as well as a second grade position due to retirement. That saves almost $180 thousand. Clementary classes will gain only two to five students at the most.
But that's not all. The district is considering closing Torrence Elementary school. That closure, combined with the elimination of four full-time and three part-time support staff positions, saves more than $160 thousand. Dr. Wolff says the district is considering closing Torrence elementary for a couple of reasons. First, it's the school with the smallest enrollment at 76 students. It's also physically the smallest school of them all.
Dr. Wolff says some retiring bus drivers would be replaced with part-timers to save cash. Meanwhile, directors, administrators and staff at the central office are taking pay freezes.
At the middle school, Dr. Wolff says the district does not plan to replace a retiring instrumental music teacher. That's one of the most controversial cuts. The district plans to save $76 thousand by not replacing the middle school music teacher.
That's prompted a viewer to write in, concerned this cut will eliminate marching band, jazz band and color guard.
We talked with Dr. Lora Wolff about these concerns. She said although duties of music staff will be altered, there are *no* plans to eliminate any music programs.
Will the Middle School band disappear?
Dr. Wolff said, "No, no band program in our district will disappear. Instrumental and vocal music is very important to the school and the district. However in these tough budget times, when we're cutting high school math and language arts, we have to look at all the programs and that was an area where we had a retirement. We will modify the program. We'll still have a jazz band and we'll still have a middle school band program."
Dr. Wolff did tell us the district is working with the music department on ways to make the cuts work, while keeping all the music programs intact to meet students' needs.
Those cuts, combined with reductions in staff travel, early retirement savings and supply cuts add up to almost a million dollars. Remember, the district needs to save 992 thousand dollars to stay in the black.
Dr. Wolff says these decisions have been difficult, but necessary. These plans are only preliminary. The Keokuk School Board will make the final decisions at its meeting on March 29th.
This is not the first round of cuts Keokuk has weathered the past few years. Last year, the district cut $600 thousand from its budget to stay in the black. Dr. Wolff says the state legislature then unexpectedly cut funding ten percent across the board last October. The district dealt with that by making cuts to transportation and building budgets, before dipping into the district's cash reserves.
