School studies budget

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

June 11, 1997

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

As the battle between the state Legislature and Gov. Arne Carlson over education tax credits wages on in St. Paul, Bemidji School District officials are continuing to struggle with their own battle against the unknowns of next year's budget.

Superintendent Rollie Morud and Business Services Director Bryan Westerman told School Board members Thursday since the education bill was was vetoed last week, the district's budget has not changed much since the last workshop in May.

"I will have few comments (tonight) because there is little more known at this time," Morud said at the workshop. "But our numbers are getting to look like the numbers we (had) anticipated."

According to Westerman's budget update, the district will have expenditures of more than $31.4 million but will only make a little less than $30.7 million in revenue.

The approximate $800,000 deficit is the key factor in next year's budget, Morud said. Even though the district has pared the budget down $800,000 this year already, there still is the $800,000 deficit next year the district needs to be concerned about.

Westerman said the bill vetoed last week contained many other items for which Carlson was asking, so more than likely once a deal is struck on the tax credits, the bill will pass. That assumption has let district officials draw some conclusions about its budget, he added.

For instance, the district will see an undetermined amount of compensatory revenue in addition to its general education aid. However, the formula used to distribute the compensatory aid will be changed to a more complicated formula -- using free and reduced-meal counts -- than previously used. The money will be awarded directly to schools generating the revenue instead of the money being indirectly disbursed through the district.

According to Morud, how schools use the money must be negotiated with the board, but he said it is one more way the state is controlling district operations.

"If this compensatory money comes through, the district and the schools will have to train ourselves how to use the money wisely," he said.

Another aspect of the bill officials are concerned about is that training and experience revenue provided by the state has been re-established as a separate category in the general education aid and will be continually phased out until it is no longer provided to districts, Morud said.

That means money which used to be provided by the state to offset the costs of a district's more experienced teachers will no longer be available to district, he said. Current teachers being hired are just not placed on the training and experience schedule. So, when all current teachers on the schedule retire, that revenue source will be gone.

Training and experience revenue "is a subsidy from the state for your expensive teachers," Morud said. "As the top-end teachers leave, (the state) isn't recognizing any new teachers for 'T and E.' Over the next five years, the bulk of $800,000 (in training and experience) money will be lost. You have to think about this because it is the Tylenol issue in a few years."

The final new factor in the education bill affecting the district, Westerman said, is a technology aid of $24 per weighted average daily membership. The technology aid would total about $150,000 for the district, but must be used specifically for technology purposes.

Morud said the four most important factors of the budget workshop were probably the $1.2 million in possible compensatory funding; a salary settlement hasn't been negotiated with teachers; there is no new revenue in the Legislature's proposed education bill; and the district's deficit for next year looks to be about $800,000.