Howland plans $1.4M in cuts for next school year

By Ed Runyan | May 24, 2011 at 12:07a.m.

HOWLAND

Last October, Howland schools was projecting to have $17.25 million available for next school year for salaries of its $28 million budget.

By March, because of projections from the Ohio Office of Budget and Management based on Gov. John Kasich’s next two-year budget, the school district changed its estimate downward $850,000, to $16.4 million.

In all, the school district is planning a $1.4 million cut in expenditures for next year, with a likely reduction of 10 teachers and elimination of two of the five vocational programs.

All of these measures were done to keep Howland in the black in 2012, but the trend will result in a $110,000 budget deficit in Howland for the 2012-13 school year, Thomas Krispinsky, the school district’s treasurer, said Monday night at the school board meeting.

The district could be facing a deficit of more than $6 million in the 2015-16 school year if two renewal levies don’t pass when they come due in a couple of years, Krispinsky said in his five-year forecast.

The biggest reason the school district’s projections have changed since October, Krispinsky said, is because Kasich’s plan eliminates about $500,000 in personal tangible property taxes two years earlier than officials had earlier expected.

Howland has traditionally collected the most personal tangible property taxes of any school district in the county, because factories in the Golden Triangle area, including Delphi Packard Electric, paid millions of these taxes, Krispinsky said.

The state phased out those taxes and is compensating schools and government bodies for them.

That compensation is set to expire in 2017.

The school district also expects to receive about $525,000 less in state aid next year and $860,000 less in federal and state stimulus money, Krispinsky said.

Over the next two school years, the district is looking at losing about $2 million per year in state and federal funding.

“We want to still put a quality product, but we’re going to need some help,” Cindy Christopher, president of the Howland Classroom Teachers’ Association, said in remarks to the board.

“We’re starting to see some programs erased,” she said, adding that the union is concerned that those losses “will begin to affect the quality of the school district.”