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Central SD 13J superintendent warns of budget shortfall and seeks community input on ending early kindergarten entry policy
Summary
Superintendent Kavista told the board the district faces a potential revenue shortfall tied to enrollment declines, PERS increases and payroll costs and announced a proposal to delete policy JEB allowing early entrance to kindergarten; staff seek community feedback before returning to the board for policy readings.
Superintendent Kavista told the board the district is entering a difficult budget process and that a combination of falling enrollment, declining regular attendance rates and rising pension and payroll costs will likely require cuts.
Kavista said current enrollment stands at 2,997 students. She reported regular attenders (the district—s metric for daily attendance) declined from 67% through March last year to 62% through March this year. Kavista said the governor—s proposed state school fund for the next biennium is about $11.36 billion (roughly 9% above the current biennium), but because of local enrollment and attendance changes the district—s net increase would be smaller; she said the district—s share would show only about a 3.3 percentage-point increase given current projections.
Kavista also flagged a 7 percentage-point increase in the district—s PERS (Public Employees Retirement System) obligation, continued payment of a PERS bond, and an expected 4% increase in staff wages (about 6% including benefits) as major budget pressures. "A majority of our financial payroll ... is the largest budget item ... over 80% now of our budget," she said, and district administration would begin discussions on potential cuts with building administrators and union leadership.
Separately, Kavista told the board the administration is proposing to delete policy JEB, which governs early entrance into kindergarten. The proposal would remove the district—s process for considering requests to enroll children who are not age-eligible under current rules; district staff said typically 1— students per year apply and that the district assesses both academic readiness and social-emotional readiness when deciding those cases.
Kavista said deleting the policy would mean the district would no longer consider early entrance requests and that staff will solicit community input: the policy will be posted for feedback, the administration will hold public comment and the board will review the policy in the standard multi-reading process before any final action. "We want to encourage the community to weigh in on this and that's why we're doing it," she said.
Board members asked whether the state is planning to fund new accountability measures discussed elsewhere; Kavista said as of the meeting she had not seen dedicated state funding tied to the pending accountability bill and that the district will continue monitoring the legislature.
No final budget decisions or policy deletions were adopted at the meeting; the superintendent directed staff to continue budget planning and to collect community feedback on the early entrance policy.
