While St. Vrain Valley School District has seen changes to funding and revenue streams due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the budget is stable and well positioned to make it through the pandemic, according to Superintendent Don Haddad.
During Wednesday’s night meeting, the SVVSD school board voted to adopt the superintendent’s amended budget for the current fiscal year, spanning July 1, 2020, through June 30.
The changes reviewed during the meeting highlighted a $5.5 million difference between the initial adopted budget of $793,399,395 in June and a proposed amendment.
Among the biggest revenue decreases caused by the pandemic was a $5 million loss due to a decline of enrollment of approximately 603 students, according to Anthony Whiteley, SVVSD’s executive director of budget and finance, during Wednesday’s school board meeting.
A significant portion of enrollment loss is attributed to a decrease in kindergarten enrollment, Whiteley said.
Enrollment district wide is down 1,105 students this year compared to last, with the most significant losses seen among preschool and kindergarten students, according to December 2020 numbers.
A similar trend is being seen across the state.
Since the start of the pandemic Colorado schools have lost more than 29,900 students — a 3.3% decline — compared with the last school year, with the biggest drop happening in the early grades and kindergarten, according to a Chalkbeat Colorado.
St. Vrain also has seen a decrease in revenue generated by charges for services, including a significant drop in preschool tuition and field trip reimbursements that would usually come from student clubs and athletic programs.
“We are hoping this will be a one-time thing related to the COVID pandemic,” Whiteley said. “Depending on how much we are able to rev up for the rest of the year, this year we might see some of that come back.”
The district also has seen an uptick in expenditures, much of them attributed to changes brought on by the pandemic.
A few of those costs include new staff positions to ensure smaller class sizes as well as increased janitorial work, and other changes needed for SVVSD’s LaunchED virtual academy, Increases in unemployment claims and added support for nutrition services, before and after school programs, HVAC maintenance and athletics.
“We moved some money to the side to ensure we can maintain and sustain (some of) those programs as they have experienced some significant impact due to COVID,” Whiteley said.
Since the fall, funding from the state also has been reduced as a result of changes adopted during the last legislative session and the downturn of the economy resulting from the pandemic, Haddad said during an interview prior to the school board meeting.
The cut in state funding totals $14 million for the current fiscal year, he said, adding districts across the state also have seen reduced funding from the state.
The loss of state funding could continue each year with possible additional cuts to be made for next year, Haddad said during an interview on Friday. The decrease in state funding means an “exponential loss over the years,”he said. Regardless of state funding reductions the district did not make any staffing cuts to make sure they were prepared to welcome students back into schools, when it was safe to do so, Haddad said.
The district was allocated more than $27 million in one-time COVID-related relief funding, 10% of which goes to its charter schools. This funding can only be used for COVID-related expenses, he said.
“It’s not an apples to apples kind of thing, the losses far outweigh anything we have received (from the state). In some cases what we’ve received covers things we would not have had to purchase anyways, it's not backfilling the 14 million we lost,” he said on Friday. “They took money and the virus gave us added expenses.”
“The problem (with these funds) is when the state cuts our budget, that's permanent cuts, ongoing cuts. When we got the stimulus package, that’s one-time money so we can’t spend it on … doing more permanent stuff. You spend it and it's gone,” Haddad said prior to the school board meeting. “It’s a temporary Band-Aid so to speak.”
Many of the district’s added expenses have been covered by one-time COVID-related funding, which leaves the budget close to where it was when initially approved, according to line items outlined in the budget breakdown included in the school board meeting agenda packet.
Mill levy override dollars, or a tax approved by local voters in 2008 and 2012 as well as the bonds in 2008 and 2016 for the exclusive use of the school district, also provided additional revenue that helped maintain certain expenses, including teacher retention, technology upgrades, instructional programming needs, capitol building repairs, the construction of the school in Carbon Valley and others, Haddad said.
“We didn’t have to cut anything in St. Vrain,” he said. “A lot of districts have had to make dramatic cuts but those (mill levy overrides) have helped (SVVSD).” In an interview on Friday, Haddad elaborated to clarify that the district had to reorganize the budget to allow it to not spend as much in order to not lay people off.
The growth potential of the district and an increase in the number of students will eventually help SVVSD net more revenue, Haddad said prior to the board meeting, adding an in-house staff grant writer has brought in several million dollars in grants to “offset some of (the) costs … we have been able to fare well and do alright.”
During Wednesday’s meeting, board members also noted the effective work the district’s finance team has done to keep people employed, support students and maintain facilities.
“This is such an example of … the system and the day-to-day diligence that we've got in this district over years and years and years of strong leadership and I think it’s allowed us to to really ride through some extremely bumpy times with a modicum of control,” Paula Peairs, SVVSD school board vice president, said during Wednesday’s meeting.
While the storm is not yet over, the district is well positioned to endure any more changes that may come, she said.
Haddad said, “We are in a very stable place, we have a relatively strong budget and we are poised to make it through the pandemic. … Right now we are in very solid and stable ground.”
