COEUR d'ALENE — Much belt-tightening and reduction of expenditures have been put into place to balance what would have been a $6 million 2024-25 fiscal year budget shortfall in the Coeur d'Alene School District.

Director of Finance Shannon Johnston provided a comprehensive overview of the district's finances Monday evening during a budget hearing, held at Midtown Meeting Center in Coeur d'Alene.

“Next year, we are projecting a $1.65 million surplus," Johnston said. "Negotiations (with certified staff) have not occurred yet, and that’s why you’re going to see a surplus. We have not settled on anything."

The Coeur d'Alene School Board is expected to adopt its 2024-25 operating budget during a June 24 budget workshop from 4-5:30 p.m. at Midtown.

Johnston said the past five years have presented a number of changes regarding different funding formulas, impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment decline and staffing negotiations.

"We try to adopt a budget with our best-known projections at the time," she said. "But there are changes. It’s a very fluid document.”

One huge change to the budget was a one-time supplemental appropriation of funds from the Idaho Legislature.

“We received word about a month ago that we were getting a little more than $3 million in one-time funds from the switch from enrollment to attendance-based (funding)," she said.

To reach a balanced budget, the district reduced 56 positions from the Fiscal Year 2025 general fund budget. These reductions are the result of budget prioritizations district staff have been developing for months and presented to the board for consideration several times. Two assistant principal positions were reduced to save $188,000; 17 classified positions, or building support personnel, were reduced, for a savings of $521,962; $1.8 million was saved by reducing 26 instructional positions; and the reduction of 11 pupil services positions will save $844,416. Together, these reductions total $3,374,129 in savings. 

Johnston said it's important to understand just three people lost their jobs in these cuts; the rest of the positions were reduced through attrition, which is resignations, retirements or unfilled vacancies.

As part of the budget prioritization process, school building budgets were decreased by 5%, or $42,083. The mental health budget was reduced by $9,356. Borah Elementary was closed for a savings of $1 million.

Special education contracted agencies will be reduced by $940,059, focusing mainly on behavioral paraprofessionals.

“We really focused on position control during this budget adoption," Johnston said.

Staff reviewed every paraprofessional position and identified costly contracts.

"With the investment into the salary schedule, we actually saw some positives this year and we’re able to hire some paras, so that is the strategy going into next year," she said. "We have added vacancies to the budget to replace these contracted agencies. It’s kind of a gamble; we probably will be able to fill most but not all. We have a contingency available in the budget in case we can’t hire but we really hope we can hire in-house for those paraprofessionals.”

Fiscal Year 2024 will end with a surplus of $3.6 million because of that $3 million one-time supplemental appropriation from the state.

"Words can’t describe what that will do to help us out down the road,” Johnston said.

The 2024 ending fund balance has increased to just shy of $10.4 million.

“We are recommending, as an administration, that we keep that in the fund balance to restore it to a healthy balance,” Johnston said. “Really, what it does is it increases the reserve to a little more than 10% of either covering revenues or operating expenditures. You can look at it in two different ways, but the best way to look at it is, ‘How much does it cover in terms of your expenditures?’”

It would cover about 10.5% of one year of expenditures, about 1.3 operating months, she said.

While this is an all-time high for an ending fund balance for the Coeur d'Alene School District, Johnston explained this is because expenditures have never been higher.

Balancing the Fiscal Year 2025 budget has been a challenge, Coeur d'Alene Superintendent Shon Hocker said Tuesday in a statement to The Press.

"Together with our school principals, staff and board, we identified areas where we could reduce costs," he said. "It was not easy to do since the decisions we made had real impacts on real people. But doing nothing wasn't an option. I'm grateful to our staff and community for their partnership and input."

Visit cdaschools.org to view the district's 2024-2025 budget.

    Hocker