From the article:
“It’s too bad it take something like this to make us look at all of our options ... closing schools, reopening negotiations, canceling contracts,” he says. “Those are not easy things to do. But [times] are bad, and they’re going to get worse. ... Now is the best time to push through change.”
I had a conversation with the Mt Lebanon Treasurer over the weekend and he did say that collections for earned income this year are coming in at about the same as they were last year for Mt. Lebanon. As I pointed out in a post last week, this does not seem to be the case at the State level. In fact, the District was sent a letter by members of the State Legislature telling us that they do not know what to expect with the basic education subsidy funding this year. If the State were to hold our subsidy even on the year, it would result in about a $120,000 hit to our projected budget.
To be fair, the new Education Secretary says that his priority is to maintain the basic education subsidy increase.
Our former superintendent has been doing some budget reductions with the help of the community in Wichita.
Please take a look at the article I linked to at the top of this post. I have been arguing for some time that our expenses need to be reduced. It seems that many other Districts around the country have had to reduce their budgets in these hard economic times.
Reductions in budgets are never easy. They are not supposed to be. But many times they are necessary to stay competitive in the long run.
Thanks for reading.
James
