District could add Open Enrollment seats to offset aid cuts in 2010-11 budget

Shorewood — School District officials are planning on opening 12 additional Open Enrollment seats along with cutting two part-time teachers, and reducing other expenditures to balance the 2010-11 budget.

District Business Manager Mark Boehlke and Superintendent Blane McCann presented an updated administrative budget the School Board on Tuesday.

The budget was first presented to the board on March 15 and predicted a $146,519 deficit. After learning of a $57,000 reduction in federal aid funding since then - increasing the deficit to $203,519 - administrators reworked their numbers to balance the budget.

The largest and most important revenue increase in the update, McCann said, comes from an updated Department of Public Instruction estimate for 2010-11 Open Enrollment reimbursement, which would provide nearly $50,000 in additional funding. The update also calls for 12 more Open Enrollment students than the original plan, which would bring in about $70,000 in reimbursement for the district.

"We have a balanced budget," McCann said, "but that's predicated on the Open Enrollment plan."

A federal aid rollover also adds another $20,000 to the budget, for a total of around $140,000 in new revenue.

New reductions proposed include cutting a part-time 4-year-old kindergarten teaching position at Lake Bluff Elementary School; a significant decrease in the funding of the village marketing program; reduced transportation costs for the district's special education department; and the removal of a part-time teaching position at Shorewood Intermediary School. The reductions add up to about $115,000 in savings for the district.

The fate of the budget, however, depends upon upcoming salary negotiations between the school district and the union that represents the teaching staff.

"The one thing we have to nail down is the staff salary arrangement," School Board President Paul Zovic said. "It could swing (the budget) one way or the other."

Zovic said that he would've liked to have the contract inked before school lets out in early June, but the School District and the teachers' union have been unable to meet. He says it is critical that the two sides reach a voluntary agreement, rather than some sort of mediated settlement.

"We've got more work to do," Zovic said.