School district cuts budget by $1.25M

The Forest Lake Area School District will be cutting its 2025 operating budget by $1.25 million due to student enrollment continuing to decline. The board approved the cut during its early April meeting. Even after the 2018 levy increase approval and some assistance through COVID-related state and federal dollars, throughout the past few years, the Forest Lake Area School District has lost significant dollars, citing student enrollment decline – at roughly 100 students lost per year – as a major reason as the state provides dollars using a per pupil formula.

“As we analyze state revenues, local revenues … there’s a need to rightsize and adjust operational costs within the district,” Superintendent Steve Massey said.

The district does “this work with an eye toward today and tomorrow and being relevant, vibrant, dynamic and successful as a district. So it’s not a simple exercise of what can we cut, and developing a list and hitting a number,” Massey explained.

Since January, the district has been analyzing what can be changed to the budget without entirely disrupting day-to-day instruction of students. Through that work, the decision the district made was to cut close to six full-time teaching positions, one high school office assistant, one secondary district department chair, one technology specialist, and one custodian; two of those positions are currently unfilled. The teaching and learning department will be restructured, as well, equating to $1.1 million of the total $1.25 million in cuts.

“If we were not able to identify any of these other items, we’d be cutting 20, 25 teaching positions – not sustainable, not a realistic path forward,” Massey said.

“We targeted positions that have been open and positions that have been open for some time for reduction, and I think that’s important we’re not impacting staff, not impacting families,” board member Curt Rebelein Jr. said.

The rest of the will come from other areas, like transitioning the one 12-month SRO to nine months, decreasing instructional and capital supplies, or shifting behavior support positions to be paid through federal funding, with Massey stressing the latter is just “a shifting of cost.”

Another change will impact students participating in athletics as the fee will increase by $2. The family cap will also increase to $140.

“We have not raised athletic fees in over five years. We all understand coaches cost more, fees cost more, referees cost more,” Massey said.

The school board approved the $1.25 million decrease to the budget in a 7-0 vote during the board meeting on Thursday, April 4.

“I appreciate very much Director [of Teaching and Learning, J.P.] Jacobson’s reshaping of his department and kind of leading the way there,” school board member Jill Christenson said, adding reductions shouldn’t entirely be on the backs of teachers.

Biggest cuts

In the effort to find areas where costs can be cut, the school board approved the teaching and learning department’s downsize and restructure, saving the district around $477,000, decreasing the team of 21 to 18 positions.

For the past six years –following a levy increase approval in 2018 – there have been four literacy coaches, seven academic support specialists, two math coaches, two secondary instructional coaches and two curriculum coordinators alongside two teaching and learning coordinators and an assessment coordinator.

“This has served us well for the past six years – serves us well today. It’s gotten instructional review up and off the ground,” Jacobson said.

The restructured smaller team, which includes the director of the department, will go into effect in July. It combines some of the previous roles and creates new roles in order to continue providing resources to students and teachers in classrooms.

In the new teaching and learning department, there will still be seven academic support specialists in each of the elementary schools, since that specialized assistance helps students not fall further behind.

“These are really integral in our buildings to supporting students when they need more time,” Jacobson said.

Instead of there being two secondary instructional coaches and two curriculum coordinators at large, the new teaching and learning team will redistribute the workload to designated personnel to oversee both coaching and special project coordination. For example, K-12 literacy coaches will lose two roles, and the position expands into a special project coordinator role.

“These people will be supporting teachers in our K-12 system on embedding literacy best practices into their instruction, supporting them through coaching and modeling,” Jacobson said.

Similarly, there will still be two K-12 math coaches, and their roles will expand as special project coordinators, too.

Through combining responsibilities, two new science/STEM coaches and coordinators will be added to support the new science curriculum.

“We’ve got a lot of really important science work underway currently, and we need to continue to support that through review and through coaching,” Jacobson said.

Additionally, there will be a family and student support coordinator, someone who works with families in difficult situations – and an early childhood instructional coach added to the teaching and learning department. Jacobson added the former role is a teaching and learning role, since this individual will also provide professional development to teachers related to teaching students of different backgrounds. The early childhood instructional coach is a role that is fully funded by community education and Jacobson hopes it continues to ensure the best early childcare is offered to children who attend.

“I really appreciate the early childhood instructional coach being added so that we’re having some continuity through that early childhood as they’re entering school,” board member Jeff Peterson said.

The assessment coordinator position will be cut and the two teaching and learning coordinators will take on that work load.

Jacobson explained that with the new curriculum the school district has been using, there are easier methods for understanding and organizing testing data that teachers, building or district administration can all understand.

The need for a designated assessment coordinator isn’t as essential anymore.

“Twenty-something years ago, when the position was initially created, accessing student performance data was pulling data out of encrypted format and it was uninterpretable for the classroom teacher, and largely, administrators,” Massey added.