The Rochester city school board has approved a $1.1 billion budget for next school year.
The budget vote happened Tuesday. It came a week late and followed a delayed state budget, which was over a month late when it was approved late last week. The bulk of the city school district’s budget comes from state funding and the district got a $50 million boost in the new state budget compared with last year.
“Fortunately, those funds have been redistributed for teaching and learning, for curriculum adoptions to further align with the science of reading as well as improve the mathematics curriculum,” Interim Superintendent Demario Strickland said. “The remaining additional funds are for our health care."
According to the budget book, health insurance is the district's fastest growing expense with a nearly $30 million increase, partly due to underfunding last year.
The adopted budget also shows about 90 fewer teaching positions compared with last year’s and 30 more teaching assistant and paraprofessional positions.
“The biggest goal from day one was to ensure that we did not use fund balance. And also begin to sort of right-size positions, starting with Central Office.” Strickland said. “There were some reductions for overages in our schools, as we found out that there's some collapsed classes.”
Despite calls from students and staff at Andrew Langston Middle School to keep staff, the budget reflects a 54% cut to that school’s budget — slightly larger than the cut proposed in March. However, the adopted budget also shows a roughly 44% drop in enrollment at that school, which is transferring to another building next school year.
The budget is still malleable as the district will be under new leadership starting in July, School board President Camille Simmons said.
"There will be more changes as Dr Rosser will need to ... shape the approved budget to meet his vision and pending needs of the district,” Simmons said. “The approval of this budget is where we will begin.”
The budget is about 4% larger than last year’s, but the district projects a drop in enrollment of about 875 students next year, while city charter school enrollment is expected to increase by nearly 300 pupils.
The five board members present for the vote passed the measure. Commissioners Beatriz LeBron-Harris and Cynthia Elliott were not present.
Rochester City Council and the school board have scheduled a June 12 public hearing on the adopted budget. Council members are expected to vote on the spending plan on June 17.
