Despite looming budget cuts, school board chooses not to support sales tax resolution

Sheila McGuire, Herald Reporter
Posted 11/10/20

Evanston school board meeting coverage from Nov. 3, 2020, UCSD No. 1 meeting

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Despite looming budget cuts, school board chooses not to support sales tax resolution

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EVANSTON — The Uinta County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees bid farewell to two long-time members at its regular meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Board members Dave Bennett and Kay Fackrell opted not to run for re-election and retire from the board after eight years of service for each man. 

Board Chair Jami Brackin and UCSD No. 1 Superintendent Ryan Thomas both grew emotional while sharing their appreciation for the two as Thomas presented each man with a plaque commemorating their service. Thomas said Bennett and Fackrell are “fine men” who have demonstrated strong integrity and their love of kids and the Evanston community throughout their time on the board. “You can’t overstate what they have done for the community,” said Thomas.

Bennett spoke and he, too, grew emotional while thanking the community and staff and students at Evanston High School, where Bennett was the principal for several years.

“I used to tell the students that high school was the best of times,” he said. “What I didn’t tell them was that it was also the best of times for me.”

Fackrell also reminisced on his time spent as a coach, district athletic director and on the board. “We’ve always had great staff to work with and lots of great kids coming through,” said Fackrell.

The two seats vacated by Fackrell and Bennett will be filled next month by newcomers Dan Wheeler and Joel Wiedrich, who were elected to the board last week. Current trustees Brackin and David Peterson won their re-election bids and will be returning.

In other business, Thomas shared with trustees a letter drafted in response to a request from the Wyoming Legislative Select Committee on School Finance Recalibration to describe the impacts of a potential 16% budget cut to the district. The Legislative Committee sent a letter to the chairs of all school boards in the state with the same request.

The letter read, in part, “A 16% budget reduction would be devastating to UCSD No. 1 and the Evanston community. Our state guarantee is $39,853,745 for fiscal year 2021. A 16% reduction represents $6.37 million dollars. … Our operating budget is approximately 15% of our guarantee. … Personnel costs represent approximately 85% of our overall budget.”

The letter continued by explaining that the district would certainly make every effort to make cuts as far away from the classroom as possible if required to make a 16% reduction, “but it would be impossible to balance the budget and not make significant cuts to personnel and programs … a proportionate cut from certified, support and administrative staff you would be looking at cutting 35 teachers, 70 support staff and two administrative positions. We could not operate with those kinds of cuts.

“A 16% reduction would require UCSD No. 1 to look at cutting programs to keep class sizes reasonable. Cuts would have to be made in extracurricular offerings, summer school, afterschool programs, enrichment opportunities including in the fine arts, vocational offerings and/or possibly closing a neighborhood school to balance the budget. Likely, unavoidable cuts would be deeper in regular and vocational instruction and activities due to the protected nature of special education instruction.”

The letter closed with a recommendation to the Wyoming Legislature to “appropriately” fund education as required by the Wyoming Constitution. “Our position is clear, there is no way to ‘cut’ your way out of our current funding crisis, new revenue sources need to be found and non-essential components of the state’s education budget need to be removed before school districts’ essential funding is cut.

“UCSD No. 1 has been required to make reductions in our budget in five of the last six years due to declining enrollments. We have reduced staffing through attrition, frozen building and operational budgets and raised class sizes to balance our budget. We feel that we have cut to the bone already and any additional reduction by the state will devastate our district and community.”

Thomas stressed that such a tremendous loss in staffing due to budget cuts would likely lead to even further losses as staff members moved their families out of the community, resulting in additional loss of enrollment and the attached funding.

Although the impacts described in the letter would be devastating, Thomas emphasized his belief that the request by the legislative committee was premature and added unnecessary stress to staff throughout the district already dealing with a stressful year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the request had been sent prior to the latest report of the Consensus Revenue Estimating Group (CREG) that showed better than anticipated revenues. He also stressed that it’s difficult to predict what the Wyoming Legislature will do in the upcoming session in early 2021.

Despite the concerns expressed about potential budget cuts and a letter suggesting the Legislature find new sources of revenue, the school board opted not to support a resolution proposed by the Wyoming School Board Association (WSBA) in favor of the adoption of an additional 1% sales tax statewide earmarked specifically for education funding.

The resolution was discussed along with several other resolutions as the board prepared to virtually attend the annual WSBA conference later this month, during which various proposed resolutions are discussed and district delegates given the opportunity to deny or affirm them for submission to the legislature.

While some resolutions are proposed by districts throughout the state, the taxation proposal was submitted by WSBA itself, which noted that an additional one-cent tax directed to the Wyoming School Foundation could generate approximately $150 million annually for education. Though Brackin and Thomas both expressed some support for the proposal and pointed out the measure would benefit the district far more than a possible general sales tax increase not designated for education, other trustees, including Bennett, Fackrell, Russell Cox, Caleb Guild and Christa Barker, said they did not support the resolution. With five members opposed, the district will not be supporting the resolution at the WSBA conference.

Trustees did opt to support four other resolutions that will be up for consideration, including measures to increase the compulsory attendance age to 18, make school attendance mandatory by the age of 6, allow for discussions about school security to be covered by confidentiality and held in executive sessions and allow districts to change the size of the school board without going through a lengthy and complex boundary board process.