Findlay Schools may move forward on budget cuts

FINDLAY — Findlay City Schools Superintendent Andy Hatton said it's time to regroup, listen and reflect after the district's loss at the polls on Tuesday. Voters rejected the district's bid for a 1% income tax in the election with a vote of 8,660 (47.82%) in favor, 9,451 (52.18%) opposed, with 18,111 votes cast. All vote totals are unofficial and include absentee ballots. The income tax would have generated enough money to correct the district's projected $12.7 million deficit. "While the results of this election are not what we hoped for, they are the decision of the Findlay community, and we respect that decision. We will provide the school district that the community has asked us to provide," he said. "As we move forward with the necessary adjustments to our district, we will continue to be transparent." He said the district must forge a way forward for students and staff. Board President Chris Aldrich thanked supporters, even if the results weren't what the schools had hoped, he said. "We will continue moving forward with the highest level of education we can provide by making the necessary adjustments that the community has now told us we need to make," Aldrich said. He said the board and the administration will work together to decide what steps to take next. Potential cuts In September, the school board announced a list of potential budget cuts. Next school year, the plan would include reducing teaching positions, administrators and support positions, and cuts to academic programs and sports. Kindergarten could return to a half-day and busing could be reduced. The goal would be to reduce the budget deficit by $5 million in the 2025-26 school year. Without additional revenue, budget-cutting would continue in the 2026-27 school year, to reduce expenses by another $4 million. The cuts would be even more drastic, including additional teaching and administrative positions, and reducing security guards. All school buildings would be closed by 6 p.m. and busing to all events would stop. Under the proposed plan, Findlay City Schools could reduce its teaching staff alone by more than 52 positions over the next two years. Several actions have already been taken to reduce expenditures, including eliminating six non-teaching, administrative positions: director of transportation, director of facilities, director of food services, fiscal coordinator, executive administrative assistant to the superintendent, and a high school building administrative assistant. Funding problems School officials began sounding the alarm about a looming "fiscal cliff" in May 2023, when the district's five-year forecast showed its carryover balance of $13.6 million for the 2002-23 school year dropping to a deficit of $7.7 million by the end of the 2026-27 school year. District Treasurer Pam Harrington said inflation and the transition off of ESSER funds were driving the deficit. ESSER is an acronym that stands for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, which is money that was granted by the federal government to the nation's schools, often millions of dollars, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Harrington said those funds are about to run out. She called planning for the loss of the funds "imperative to the district's financial success." Findlay Schools received a total of $13.8 million in ESSER funds, with most of the money used to pay employee salaries and benefits. The school district ended the 2022-23 school year with an ESSER fund balance of about $2.9 million. With the district charging off about $2 million each school year to the ESSER account, the fund was expected to be nearly exhausted last school year. In the five-year financial forecast, Harrington said inflation drove the district's expenses for supplies up by more than 25%. In future years, she said those expenses are expected to moderate. After a year of disappointing returns at the ballot box in 2020, when the schools were actively seeking an additional levy, administrators recommended closing Lincoln Elementary School and Jacobs Primary School in the 2021-22 school year and reorganizing the district's elementary schools to save money. The plan then was to stay off the ballot as long as possible and to rely on the savings and the ESSR funds. The 106-year-old Lincoln Elementary building, located at 200 W. Lincoln St., was closed. Jacobs Primary, located at 600 Jacobs Ave., was repurposed. A superintendent's finance committee recommended closing two elementary schools in October, just before the district's third and final attempt to pass an additional tax in 2020 to support district operations. The levy was defeated. Voters last approved additional operating money for the city schools in 2004, with a five-year, 5.9-mill levy. In May 2014, voters agreed to make that levy permanent.