GFPS board to consider budget at Aug. 17 meeting
The Great Falls Public Schools board will be asked to adopt its budget for the new fiscal year during its Aug. 17 meeting.
Under state law, the board must adopt the budget by Aug. 25 for these funds: general, transportation, retirement, tuition, adult education, technology, flexibility, debt service and building reserve.
The board and district staff reviewed the budget for those funds during an Aug. 13 work session.
The general funds for both the elementary and high school districts are impacted by student enrollment, legislative action and local mill levy elections when passed by voters.
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The school board voted in the spring not to pursue a levy this year.
Last year, the district met the requirements of the STARS Act to increase beginning teacher salaries and received an additional $3,091,230 from the state; plus an inflationary adjustment and student enrollment changes resulted in an additional $1,373,273 to the district in state funding.
This year, the district is continuing to comply with STARS, but will only receive a three percent inflationary increase on those funds and an inflationary increase in other parts of the budget, but with continued declining enrollment, the district will only receive an additional $365,140.76 for the elementary district and $210,510.67 for the high school district in state funding to the general funds.
The taxable valuations increased for both districts:
- elementary taxable valuation increased by $16,688,427 to $175,605,517 up from $158,937,090 the previous year
- high school taxable valuation increased by $16,634,638 to $178,398,872 up from $161,764,234 the previous year
The tuition fund includes a permissive levy and allows the district to recover costs for educating in-district special education students, which are calculated by the Montana Office of Public Instruction. Recent legislative changes also require the district to pay tuition for residential students in group home programs and students attending school outside their home district.
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The combined elementary and high school budgeted funds, including debt service for this school year totals $131,214,912, an overall increase of $2,979,539 from last year.
The elementary district general fund budget increased by $365,140.76 and the high school general fund budget increased by $210,510.67, according to the district.
The total mills for the GFPS budget are 165.38 compared to 214.11 last year, a decrease of 48.73 mills.
This year was “quiet,” with no major tax protests, Luke Diekhans, GFPS’ business operations manager, told the school board during their Aug. 13 work session.
School funding is different from city and county budgets and as the taxable valuation and value of mills increases, it requires fewer mills to generate revenue for the GFPS budget.
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Diekhans said they were awaiting more information from Cascade County to determine the impact to a property owner’s tax bill this year since recent legislative changes have complicated the process.
During the Aug. 13 work session, Lance Boyd, assistant superintendent, said there hadn’t been major cuts to the district’s federal funding programs, which had been a concern last year during the budget process, but there had been a five percent cut.
He said that Congress hadn’t approved a budget yet and if it doesn’t by Sept. 30, the district’s Title 1 funding remains flat.
For now, Boyd said the district is lucky to have a stagnant hold in its federal funding.
Federal funding is based in part on student enrollment, but Title 1 funding includes students who go to private school within GFPS’ boundaries, which includes St. Patrick’s Academy, the local Catholic schools.
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St. Patrick’s closed an elementary school, which was formerly Holy Spirit, which had a large number of Title 1 students that GFPS can no longer count and will lose more federal funding, but Boyd said he didn’t expect it to be significant.
In response to a board question, Boyd said they hadn’t seen many Holy Spirit students transfer to Our Lady of Lourdes, but some Catholic school students returned to GFPS.
The majority, or 94 percent, of Title funding is staff, Boyd said, and the remainder is training, professional development, supplies and curriculum.
The district is also watching the Little Shell Tribe’s Good Medicine housing development.
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Boyd said that the Little Shell has to build infrastructure and complete at least one house before the district can start an application for impact aid, because it’s address-based.
The district’s IDEA federal dollars, which fund special education, are based on student enrollment and not the number of students served by special education programs.
The district receives federal funding through the McKinney-Vento program for homeless students and is required to provide services to those students. The district had about 300 students in the program last year and received $23,000 from the federal government, Boyd said.
He said he’s concerned about the federal funding for gifted and talented education, which was an annual allotment in 2022, but is now distributed every two years and has been $20,000 per year.
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It’s federally mandated to have gifted teachers, Boyd said, but the federal funding doesn’t cover the cost of the district’s four gifted teachers.
Boyd said he’s anticipating a cut in federal money for the workforce training program, but are preparing for the state’s new Future Ready program.
Heather Hoyer, superintendent, said staff had been working to renumber classes so they line up with the state for Future Ready payments, which will run through the Montana Department of Labor.
“We’re learning as they’re flying this ship,” Hoyer said.
Boyd said the building principals and counseling teams advocate well for their workforce readiness programs and the district will have to seek industry partners who have credentials and could get a Class 4 license, which allows industry professionals to teach based on practical work experience rather than a traditional degree.
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As an example, Boyd said the district can’t afford to hire a cosmetology teacher, but are offering a class this year because a community member volunteered to teach it and a teacher of record will award the credit.
He said they’re also looking at options to partner with a university that has machining equipment to prepare students for the jobs projected to come with Janicki.
The Future Ready program rewards schools for graduates achieving post-secondary milestones, but requires a lot of documentation from GFPS.
Hoyer said that staff has already been putting those pieces in place to be prepared, but it will be a lot of work and a lot of tracking.
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Diekhans, GFPS’ business operations manager, said there are still some unknown funding details from the state, such as its guaranteed tax base number, and they’re preparing for more changes over the next year.
He said they’ll meet in October to start planning next year’s budget.
The “budget is tight,” he said.
Student enrollment is down 180 students at the elementary level and 67 at the high school level.
Some district funds can carry over, but some can’t, so Diekhans said the district works to use its money efficiently.
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The district had transferred about $1.4 million to the interlocal fund with plans for some big projects, but weren’t able to get those done due to unplanned repairs needed after the January earthquake and March wind event that blew half the roof off Lincoln Elementary, Diekhans said.
The district is also putting money away for the next major curriculum update, which is elementary materials. The last one was over $1 million, district officials said during the Aug. 13 work session.
The only way for the district to increase its revenue is an operational levy.
The max the district could levy this year would be $1,134,360 for elementary and $1,243,293 for high school, for a total of $2,377,653, Diekhans said.
The district is projected to receive an additional $575,652 from the state for enrollment and inflation, but has a $2,867,067 deficit to cover contractual obligations. The district is covering that shortfall with reserves and remaining COVID funds this year, but won’t likely be able to do that in the coming years.
In an effort to reduce costs, the district cut 17.5 teacher positions through attrition, retirements and combining classes.
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Jackie Mainwairing, assistant superintendent, told The Electric that no existing personnel were cut, but that they’ve continued combining course sections and making other adjustments to lower personnel costs.
The district retired an energy bond this year and renegotiated its utility contracts to keep costs steady for a few years.
Going into a legislative season, district officials are watching to see how bills will affect education.
Hoyer said bills are already being drafted, some coming out of the school budgeting interim commission that recently wrapped up.
