As the St. Joseph School District looks at operating in the red for the coming school year the board of education considers giving staff a 2-percent raise even with the .63 operating levy in question.
During Friday’s school board meeting board members looked at considering actions for the 2015-16 salary schedules.
However, after the release of audit findings from state Auditor Tom Schweich stating the district has “failed to establish adequate policies and procedures regarding stipends, does not maintain adequate documentation of the stipend amounts paid to employees, and the School Board does not approve most stipends given to employees” the school board is looking at the need to do away with stipends completely.
“All stipends will roll into one total compensation,” said Doug Flowers SJSD Dir. of Human Resources. “The stipends itself, I know it’s an ugly word.”
Board member Chris Danford quickly replied, “Yeah it’s hitting the audit pretty bad, like 40-million dollars bad.”
The board had previously voted to approve a 2-percent raise for staff members for the upcoming school year during a January board meeting.
“The board had originally adopted a budget for this school year that was a $3.7 million dollar deficit budget,” Beau Musser, SJSD Chief Finance Officer told the St. Joseph Post. “What that means is we went into this year expecting to spend $3.7 million dollars more then we were going to bring in in revenue. Since the adoption of that budget we lost revenue from the state of Missouri for summer school. So revenues have gone down and expenses have gone up.”
Board member Kappy Hodges suggested during the meeting that in light of recent audit findings and Commerce Bank terminating its purchasing card agreement that the board look at not giving the 2-percent raise this school year and just giving a step which also comes with a raise.
“I would like to suggest that we change how we did that and go with just the steps instead of the 2-percent raise going forward,” said Hodges. “I’m concerned because the audit calls into question our financial well-being especially for next year, and the possible loss of the levy and such and then we have Commerce Bank pulling the credit cards from us which just kind of illustrates just how grim things are looking.”
However, in order to reconsider the board would have to vote unanimously.
Board Member Dennis Snethen said he feels it’s important to give staff members the 2-percent raise and do what the board said it was going to do.
Musser said currently the St. Joseph School District has around $40-million dollars in reserves but is operating on a deficit on salary and benefits for the upcoming school year.
“The board asked me if we could afford this last month and I said yeah if you have a plan to increase taxes the problem is the opposite looks to be heading our way,” said Musser during the meeting.
If the district were to lose the .63 tax levy in August, Musser said that’s an additional loss of $6.5 million dollars.
“Simple math would be for the next school year we’re looking at a deficit budget that could exceed $10 million dollars annually,” he told the St. Joseph Post. “That’s problematic because at that point to bridge a $10 million dollar gap in our budget that would require an increase in one dollar in our local property tax rate which is significant again because the St. Joseph School District hasn’t increased our taxes at all in 10 years.”
The board decided Friday to have another work session in the next two weeks to address the salary schedules before an action is taken.
Flowers said the board needs to make a decision before April 15th so that salary schedules can be inputted into the system and all positions that require contracts can be finalized.