Less staff, increasing expenses reflected in Helena Schools Budget

On Tuesday, the Helena Public School board approved both Elementary and High school budgets for the 2024-2025 school year.

“What you saw was the budgets reflect less personnel, alright, but our expenses are still increasing,” says Superintendent of Helena Public Schools, Rex Weltz.

The total budgeted fund for the elementary schools is $67.5 million. The total budgeted fund for the high schools is a little over $34 million. 92% of the general fund is spent on salaries and benefits in the elementary district, while 90% is spent on the same in the high school district. 34% of the money comes from local taxes to run these schools. Another 43% comes from the state.

The district is currently in a deficit and eliminated a number of positions coming into this ‘24-25 school year. To achieve a more balanced budget, Weltz says that the district was forced to dip into its interlocal funds, or savings account. Weltz says that they’ve tried to limit the type of cuts that would make a noticeable difference for student experience and that they are constrained by the state’s funding mechanism.

“The educational funding mechanism in which we're all taking part in, we're just not able to keep up with the expenses with the revenue coming in. So, what a tactic in that is to make reductions,” says Weltz.

In addition, HPS closed the Ray Bjork Learning Center and opened up the opportunity for charter schools.

“In the budget consensus committee, there were recommendations to the board that to take some elementary buildings offline and that didn't take place this year. Is that an option to play in the future years? Absolutely, I think. And not to necessarily say one building, but, you know, which ones would make the most sense,” says Weltz.

Over the ‘23-24 school year, over 200 children requested a boundary variance or to switch to a different school district. 73% of these students reside in the 59602 zip code. The district is enacting a plan known as Building Bridges to better understand and retain students and their families. House Bill 203, passed during the 2023 legislative session, allows for students to transfer between districts and parents do not have to pay tuition. The district’s understanding of this migration was largely informed by new data released by OPI.

“We know that students are coming here for a reason, but we want to know why our students are not. And then we'll make adjustments from there, but I think now we'll have a what's normal and we really don’t know what’s normal because we’ve never had that data before. And so, this is the first time we're gonna be able to track it,” says Weltz.