Indian River School District just cut $3 million from their budget earlier this week. Where will these cuts come from? Dani Bozzini with WMDT has the answer:
And with more students means more teachers. The district wasn’t getting enough funding to continue the same allocation of their schools budgets so they made some changes.
Instead of cutting teachers and staff’s salaries, the district decided to cut the discretionary part of the budget. The District office was cut by 50 percent and the schools’ budgets by 30 percent.
Here’s the thing though… most traditional school districts don’t cut their budget unless they are having some type of financial problem. If a school district grows, the property taxes collected for local funds, as well as state and federal funds should compensate for that. The district’s Chief Financial Officer was put on paid administrative leave in April and then he was able to retire in May. The State Auditor’s office also began an investigation into the district’s finances. No report has come out from the Auditor of Account’s office concerning Indian River School District.
I believe the school district should own up to whatever Miller is suspected of doing. This isn’t the first time mysterious financial issues have come up with him. He plea bargained his way out of something similar in Brandywine eighteen years ago.
I love how Superintendent Susan Bunting makes it sound so casual in the article with WMDT.
Dr. Bunting tells 47 ABC that students or parents won’t see much of any changes and it’s just little cutbacks to help with their growing population.
Yeah, okay. You don’t cut $3 million out of your budget unless you are having some serious issues. Now I have to start looking into Indian River too. I don’t have time for this. Just come clean Bunting! Between charter-district payments, ESSA, being the non-paid watchdog for the Delaware DOE, elections, and everything else, can you just email me and show me what is really wrong with your budget? That would be super! Cause if what I’m hearing is true, you guys are going to have to come up with some new spin next month. I’ll give you a few days, but then I’m getting the shovel out.
Or does this have anything to do with the charter-district payments? How many students does Indian River send to Sussex Academy? When did the CFO get put on administrative leave again? April? Hmm…
How many inspections are going on with schools over at Tom Wagner’s office? Time to bring Kathleen Davies back Tom. You can’t handle all this work!
The Season Of Myths 