Des Moines schools braces for $11 million in cuts

Des Moines Public Schools could face $11 million in budget cuts if the Legislature moves forward with a proposed 1 percent increase school funding.

Republican legislators are proposing a 1 percent increase in per-pupil funding to K-12 public schools, roughly a $32 million increase.

That's less than the $54 million Gov. Kim Reynolds proposed in her Condition of the State address, and it's less than the $40 million they approved for schools last year.

A 1 percent increase would force budget reductions and stuff cut because it does not keep up with rising operating costs, Des Moines Superintendent Tom Ahart said.

It's not clear what cuts would be made. The district's 2019-20 budget must be approved by April 15.

"While we have cut staff for three consecutive years, we have been able to do so without pink-slipping teachers, and we think we’ll be able to accomplish that again, thanks in part to the retirement incentive that we offered last fall," Ahart said.

"There will be some staff reductions at central office as well as some reduction in teacher staff," among other cost-saving strategies the district is exploring, he said.

Ahart told the Register that until the legislation is signed into law, the district will plan for a zero percent increase — one that would necessitate $14 million in cuts.

"We continue to use zero percent for planning purposes because we’ve been burned before in the recent past," Ahart said.

For the second year in a row, lawmakers are having to make mid-year spending cuts that will affect state programs and services. Those will affect the current 2018 budget year, which ends June 30.

Senate Republicans have proposed $52 million in cuts, with the bulk of those affecting higher education, the justice system and state human services. However, Republican leaders have said they do not intend to make cuts to the funding already promised to Iowa's public schools for the current year.

Last year, Ahart opened the district's budget by writing: "We are living in uncertain times, and for many of us, what feels like unsafe and threatening times."

He cited the political climate — and said the "real fear" is that zero to 2 percent increases are "the 'new normal'" for districts.

That's because smaller increases do not keep up with rising costs to health care, compensation, fuel, goods or services, he wrote, and are less than the 4 percent increases of years past.