This school year has been a year of surprises and uncertainty for Indiana public schools, and the near future appears no brighter. That uncertainty has touched Noblesville Schools directly as we end the year with 39 teachers unsure of their employment next year.

The latest budget update I shared with the school board Tuesday night is available here as a pdf document,
and it certainly impacts the recall of all or part of our 39 teachers. As you absorb the financial information contained in the budget update, please keep these three assumptions in mind:

• We are currently in a $3 million deficit spending pattern, and by the end of 2010, we will have spent all of our cash reserves and face a deficit if we do not enter the 2010-11 school year with reduced costs. The numbers in the budget presentation for 2010 include all of the cost saving factors recommended by the Budget Review Committee and a $1million reduction in health insurance costs. We will realize one-third of those savings from September through December of 2010. The numbers for 2010 do not include items that have to be negotiated with the Noblesville Teachers Forum. The amount by which we can reduce expenditures through negotiations will directly impact how many of those 39 teachers we can call back for the 2010-11 year. We still are negotiating certain items that could save the district about $1 million, the cost of 20 teachers.

• The 2011 and 2012 revenue amounts include the $5 million referendum. We will not realize any of the first $5 million until it is collected in the summer of 2011 and again in December of 2011- but thankfully it will be there.

• The 2011 and 2012 revenue amounts also include the strongly anticipated shortfall in state funding for at least the next two years. Projected is an additional cut of 4.5 percent in 2011 and another 4.5 percent in 2012. If realized, those cuts would cost Noblesville Schools $2.3 million. We just hope we don't see any further reductions by the state before the end of 2010.

The callbacks of teachers we hope to make will likely be by elementary class size first, then art/music/counselors, secondary class size, and then media. Our goal is to balance reasonable class size with programs and stop deficit spending.