It’s not easy making adjustments to any budget. Let alone changes to a benefit you have previously offered that impacts the salary of your staff. Mount Vernon Schools has made some proposed changes and cuts to help them right their unspent balance over the past few months. We want to commend the work of the management committee of the Mount Vernon school district and administration in finding cuts they did that will have a minimal impact on staffing at Mount Vernon Schools. We know it took long meetings and reviewing items to get to points of consensus between the groups moving forward.
We agree with Dr. Greg Batenhorst that several of the issues faced by the school have come from flat to borderline anemic support of education in this state over the past 10 or more years. Other factors in our community, as he outlined in late March, contributed to the financial situation the district finds itself in. There is not one single issue to blame, and even when it comes to realizing when cuts may have been needed, the district was still weathering the COVID-19 pandemic up to at least the beginning of the 2021-22 school year, which was a huge change for teachers and districts. He, like good leaders, has addressed the mistakes he made at school board meetings and then helped the district weather this through the end of the school year.
We also agree with Jeremy Kunz and Jason Clark that the impact to salaries from reducing the health insurance stipend – especially for support staff – still need to be addressed, and are hopeful the district will find a way to do so in some capacity. A $6,000 change to a salary is hard for anyone to weather, but especially for the support staff members impacted by this change.
As Suzette Kragenbrink and Kunz have made known at the board meetings, the changes to the district’s health insurance were not made as a cost saving measure. Yes, there might be savings realized by ending the stipends and the changes to the health insurance are being made as some of these cuts, but the goal with the insurance reduction was to make sure the district was complying with the Affordable Care Act. The cost for insurance at the district may increase, as the cost offered by the district is $168 greater than the stipends currently handed out. We’ll know more at the April 17 meeting how much the insurance will cost the district.
We know this is just a rough patch for the district and, as Batenhorst has reminded the community, that the district’s finances are fine if they start taking correctional action now and watching budgets closer over the next few years. Making corrections will eventually help the solvency ratio improve, and incoming superintendent Matt Leeman is knowledgeable of the issue and ready to take a deep dive into the budget beginning next fiscal year to see if there are other changes that can be made.
Mount Vernon is not alone, either, in these issues. Other districts are weathering similar issues from a number of factors and having to make deeper and harder cuts.