By:Jennifer Marino
At the all-day budget meeting on March 16, Johnson outlined the ideas he and the school administration have come up with to keep the increase from going any higher. Like last year, there are several large increases in the budget, which school officials say are out the school's hands and make up about 90 percent of the total increase.
The increases include $2.4 million in contractual salary obligations, $1.3 million in contributions to the Teachers' Retirement System and the Employee Retirement System, $350,000 in Social Security and other salary-related benefits and $1.1 million in health insurance. There are other smaller increases for things like electricity and replacing one of the buses the district owns, making the total increase close to $5.7 million.
Johnson said he had been "locked away" in the boardroom for the past week and a half, with administrators coming up with ideas to avoid a double-digit increase in taxes. To meet the goal of increasing the budget by 7.7 percent, Johnson made several recommendations to the board. Among them was eliminating from the budget $600,000 in capital improvements, including things like replacing doors and repairing the tracks at South Side middle and high school, with the possibility of putting the improvements up for a bond issue in the fall.
Also recommended was the implementation of a retirement incentive for teachers and the custodial staff in the hope of saving about $300,000 in salaries. In addition, administrators are hoping to recover money from overtime and chaperones.
Johnson also suggested consolidating the staff by, for instance, eliminating stringed instruments in third grade music and foreign language at the elementary level. All buildings and departments were asked to cut their budgets by 10 percent.
In terms of bringing in revenue, the district has begun investigating how much neighboring districts charge for the use of their property -- buildings and grounds -- and who gets charged. Charging outside groups could bring in about $100,000.
The total reduction, with all the suggestions, amounts to about $1.8 million. The recommended cuts were chosen so as not to damage the core of the instructional program, according to Johnson.
The board and Johnson hoped there would be some closure on the budget when the final number were presented at the regular meeting of the Board of Education on Tuesday, after the Herald went to press.
