Understanding Personnel Salaries

I interviewed our Assistant Superintendent of Finance for this assignment.  This was an eye opening experience for me because of the numbers that she gave me. The total personnel cost for the 12-13 school year were $11,689,284. This is 67.52% of the total budget. This only leaves around 33% of the budget left to accommodate other programs. This makes it difficult to cut the budget if a crisis situation were to arise. Personnel would have to be cut through a RIF process. The 67.52% is 5% higher than the state average. Our district can manage this because we have a leaner operating budget. I can attest to a lean budget because since I am the high school principal, I have to look at my budget each year and make appropriate cuts to certain programs. When the state cut  funds to school districts recently, our district was able to keep teaching jobs by cutting budgets across the board, cutting insurance, and limiting travel.

If the district were to have a 5% increase to salaries, there would be positive and negative impacts to the budget. The positive impacts include attracting more desirable teachers. Competing better with local districts for teachers. Moral of staff could be higher. The negative impacts of a 5% increase are that the salary increase is permanent, and the district cannot reduce salaries for the same assignment if money is not  available. With current funding laws, if a district is at the maximum tax rate ($1.17 with rollback election) and student population is stagnant, there will be no additional funding to pay for raises. Money will have to come from a fund balance and a deficit budget will be realized. The district may have to reduce other areas of the budget to fund a salary increase. Taxpayers may not agree with teachers receiving an increase larger than the increase in the cost of living, or larger  than what other industries give as raises. This could result in a change in the Board of Trustees a the next election.