School board plans for budget cuts

Talk about it

The Farmington School Board is making plans to cut an estimated $1.29 million from its 2012-13 budget.

Finance director Carl Colmark told school board members Monday the cuts are necessary primarily because of a loss of $800,000 in federal jobs bill money and a $400,000 shift of technology staff funding from the capital budget to the general fund.

“Those two items alone represent about $1.2 million of the $1.3 million (deficit),” Colmark said Monday.

There is still more discussion to come, but as presented Monday, nearly half of the cuts — just over $629,000 — will come from classroom staff. On Monday Colmark proposed class size increases of one student in grades three through five, 1.5 students at the middle school level and two students at Farmington High School. That would put the average third- through fifth grade class at 26.1 students, the average middle school class at 27 students and the average high school class at 29 students.

Those numbers would still leave class sizes within the district’s guidelines.

There was no increase proposed for class sizes from kindergarten through second grade.

The proposal did not sit well with board chair Tera Lee, who campaigned vigorously for smaller class sizes prior to winning her board seat.

“I don’t want the class sizes to take the hard and fast hit,” she said.

The other big chunk of the cuts — approximately $650,000 as proposed — would come from staff positions that would not impact class sizes. Colmark suggested Monday that $267,273 of those cuts come from the elementary level, $186,669 from the middle level and $196,058 from Farmington High School. It would be up to administrators at each level to figure out how to make those cuts.

“What we’re doing is taking more of a bottom up approach to make decisions rather than top down,” Colmark said. “It allows our building administrators, who are in the best position, to decide where the cuts are.”

The approach would also ensure cuts were made consistently across schools at each level, Colmark said.

The school board will bring the proposed cuts back for further discussion before any decisions are made.

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