Budget beleaguered NE Dubois School Corp gathers input
About a month ago, Northeast Dubois School Superintendent Bill Hochgesang reported the school corporation has a financial problem.
This year the school corporation is facing a budget shortfall of between $200,000 and $300,000.
To seek some potential solutions, the school corporation hired Brookston-based Administrator Assistance to help guide the school corporation through a feasibility study.
About 200 people attended a special public input session Tuesday night at the Celestine Community Center. The crowd had questions concerning the tide of expenses overtaking revenues every year.
According to Hochgesang, the school corporation is receiving less money from the State of Indiana due to lower student enrollment.
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Since 2008, when state lawmakers decided that the money follows the student, revenues have been dropping at the school due to lower student population numbers.
However, the school corporation budget for teachers and other expenses paid from the general fund do not go down with the lower revenues.
Therefore, Northeast Dubois, along with many rural school corporations in Indiana, find themselves in a similar position where a financial crisis is the result.
But, solutions to how to deal with the problem are as widely varied as the school systems facing the issue.
Fortunately, for NE Dubois, they don’t have massive debt like some.
Hochgesang said in the meeting that they have a budget shortfall this year of between $200,000 and $300,000. Even so, with revenue payouts to the school district, they are only barely able to remain solvent and make payroll payments.
Bruce Patton, representing Administrator Assistance, ran the public portion of the meeting and fielded questions from those in attendance.
One of the assumed outcomes on the part of the attendees is that one of the schools in the Northeast Dubois district would be closed to save money.
That was not discussed in detail by neither Hochgesang nor Patton. Attendees were reminded that the public meeting was being held to gather input and answer questions where they could.
Hochgesang is reluctant to travel down the road of trying to raise revenues from taxes for the school district by a referendum vote. He does not want to do that. But, neither can he sit by while the school languishes further into financial difficulty.
Hochgesang also said that he has yet “to give any kind of raise” to school district employees. He explained, “We’re sacrificing as best we can as a staff.”
Patton is a former superintendent and is attuned to the financial challenges facing school districts state wide.
He described the process as a fact-finding mission to help the school district make wise decisions. Administrator Assistance will do that by continuing to gather input before making a preliminary report towards the end of the year, with a final report in January.
Some ideas for dealing with the shortfall included scheduling changes amongst the schools, a referendum to increase the budget on the 2016 ballot or consolidating the corporation’s two elementary schools — Celestine and Dubois elementary — into a single school.
Patton said he could not predict which way the school board and superintendent would go with their decisions, only that the information collected would play a part in those decisions.
A second public forum will be held at 6 p.m. Tuesday, October 13, at the Dubois Middle School.
