Dealing With Our Budget

Today is the start of fall athletic practice.  For the 2009-2010 school year, the Grand Ledge Public Schools will transfer $597,780 from the general fund to the athletic fund.  Last year we transferred $716,480.  We asked the athletic department to reduce their budget by $118,700 for the upcoming school year.

Lest anyone think that we asked the athletic department to shoulder too much, it must be remembered that we asked every area to contribute.  The cuts in the athletic budget were part of the 1.9 million dollars of cuts that we made in our school district for the 2009-2010 school year.  For the upcoming school year we eliminated positions (assistant operations director, technology support, middle school assistant principal), restructured contracts (transportation and custodial), reduced our textbook budget, and reduced the number of employees we have.  We made sixteen different reductions to the budget. 

Even with these cuts, more needs to be done.  The budget picture for our school, like every school in Michigan, is not positive.  It appears that schools will have reduced state funding for at least the next two years.  The 2009-2010 reduction will likely be $100 a student, which in Grand Ledge translates to almost $570,000.  In 2010-2011 the reduction will likely be $500 per pupil, or approximately 2.6 million dollars. 

Can we continue to cut our way our of this budget problem?

In my mind, we cannot cut our way out of this problem.  We need to figure out a more stable way to fund schools.