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Budget
In the past, our school has been somewhat immune to the effects of a down economy and drastic reductions in state and federal revenue. Unfortunately, that has now changed with the 2011-12 school budget. When we walked into our meeting last Tuesday night, we were facing a $250,000 deficit for the next school year due to dramatic reductions in state and federal funding. We are required by the state of North Carolina to approve a balanced budget by the conclusion of our last Board meeting of the year. Heather Richter, our treasurer, together with the Finance Committee, did a wonderful job providing an analysis to the Board that we could dissect, debate, analyze and, finally, craft into a budget for next year. Our work was not easy, but the concepts were not complicated.
Basically, the Board needed to address some combination of the following in order to balance the budget:
· raising more money from school families;
· cutting school programs;
· increasing class size/student population; and
· reducing or eliminating teacher salaries/raises.
As most of you know, each of the above issues are controversial.
School family contributions:
The Board reluctantly approved a more aggressive development campaign a few years ago in order to support a new school building and programs that serve students with their unique abilities. We realized that asking parents of a public school to give had its own set of repercussions, but we felt then, and now, that having a strong development campaign every year is the only way to support the kind of program needed by our children in a permanent facility that assures the ongoing viability of our school. However, we failed to meet our development goal this past year and, in fact, many parents failed to fulfill their pledges. We know that relying on parent contributions to make up our budget deficit is difficult for our families, but they are the recipients of the enhanced programs offered by the Scholars' Academy.
School programs:
Highly gifted children need more programs, not less. We realized that cutting school programs, such as our enrichment programs, would erode a significant part of what makes us unique.
Increased student population:
We realize that highly gifted children need more attention from staff; not less. Small class sizes are the reason some parents chose to come to our school in the beginning.
Teacher salary increases:
Do we want to ignore the compensation needs of those who are in charge of our children's learning? Is it fair to expect our staff to receive no increase in salary, particularly when we may increase their responsibilities at the same time?
Our decision was not an easy one, but, in short, the following are the steps the Board approved last Tuesday to balance the 2011-12 school year budget:
1. increase enrollment from 323 students to 342 students;
2. increase development (annual giving campaign) from $577,000
to $675,000; and
3. reduce teacher raises from 3% to 1%.
In the final analysis, the Board felt that it was most important to keep the current programs in-place and that a modest increase in class size (19 children over 17 classes) would not materially impact the educational experience of any one child. The "17 class" figure is a little misleading as we voted to keep class sizes in K and 1 the same as last year due to the more significant attention needed for our younger students. The following chart shows the class sizes for last year and the new increases for this coming year.
Grade 2010-2011 2011-2012
K 19/18 18 /18
1 19/17 19/19
2 20/20 20/21
3 20/21 21/21
4 20/20 22/22
5 20/20 22/22
6 18/17 22/22
7 19 18/18
8 19 17
In the face of the turmoil that is occurring in other public schools across the nation, it is a significant achievement navigating a budget that (a) avoids the loss of our wonderful teachers and special programs, (b) provides modest raises to those same wonderful teachers, (c) preserves and maintains our new facility, and (d) keeps our class sizes at levels consistent with those that the school has previously managed with great success.
It is critical for the Scholars' Academy community to understand that this balance is only possible because of the continued generous financial investment in our school by our families. Historically, on average, families have given just under $2,000 per student. The new development budget is validated by the historical giving patterns established by Scholars' families over the years. It remains important that families continue to support the school with their time and money if we are going to maintain the level of programming we currently offer.
The Board will reassess the budget in November after the annual drive to determine whether programs will need to be reduced due to the annual campaign revenue and state and federal funds. To put it bluntly, without funding we could face the possibility of having to reduce our enrichment programs from twice to once a week or even eliminating them altogether. A likely scenario of possible program cuts would be:
1. Spanish and Chinese from two days to one day; eliminate athletics
2. Eliminate Spanish and Chinese ; reduce music
3. Eliminate music
Development and the annual giving campaign will remain critically important to us in the coming years. Please continue to give generously when asked by our development committee members so that we can reach 100% participation in parent contributions next year and continue to offer the enhanced programs that benefit our children. It is worth noting that schools with 100% participation are more likely to receive additional funds through foundation grants.
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