District 196 Board Awaits Dayton Budget

When the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan school district board met Monday, the conversation focused on the upcoming budget plan Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton is set to announce Tuesday.

District 196 Superintendent Jane Berenz presented an update of the district budget process and said the district has made a number of estimates based on a projected Dayton budget.

"At the beginning of the school year, we were anticipating that money from the state would decline about 7 percent in the upcoming school year," she said. "But we're currently expecting a reduction in funding for K-12 in the range of 2.5 to 5 percent."

She noted that the budget will still have to work its way through the Legislature.

"We are in the unfortunate situation of having to approve our budget before we know the final amount of aid we'll get from the state," Berenz said.

The reduction in state funding for schools is the biggest financial uncertainty facing District 196 administrators as they work their way through the budget process. Berenz said many other factors influencing the district’s bottom line are stable or only increasing slightly each year.

"The state pays a certain amount per student and the good news is that we anticipate a stable enrollment for the next five years," said Berenz.

The district has been successful in controlling its largest expenditure—employee salaries and benefits—which constitutes 84 percent of its general fund expenditures. Berenz said the bargaining groups who have negotiated new contracts since September have agreed to contracts with no increase in wages or salary schedules.

Berenz will make budget recommendations to the school board, then will present them to teachers in early March. The proposal will be open for public discussion later that month.

The board also heard a preliminary 2011-2012 capital expenditure budget presentation from Director of Finance and Operations Jeff Solomon.

Solomon said that budget was designed to provide flexibility in the uncertain funding situation.

“A great deal of the capital expenditure budget is fixed costs or is money that is spent as part of a longer-term contract," he said. "So we have worked to give ourselves as much flexibility as possible in this financially challenging period.”

A second reading of a more detailed capital expenditures budget is scheduled for April.