BSD Budget - FAC meetings

As you may have heard, the district has formed a Fiscal Advisory Committee (FAC) to take part in gathering information, analyzing data, and making recommendations on district budget cutting priorities for the 2010-11 school year. Because the cuts the district needs to make will likely impact our school and our educational system as a whole, I urge you to attend any of the following community meetings to ask questions and submit your input.

• March 11: Community Information Session, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m., Newport High School Library
• March 18: Community Information Session, 5 p.m. - 7 p.m., Sammamish High School Library
• March 24: Community Information Session, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m., Interlake High School Library

In addition to the community sessions listed above, you can access additional information on the district process and submit your feedback by going to: www.bsd405.org/2010-11Budget.

Please take part in this process and submit your feedback so that the recommendations made by the FAC reflect our priorities.

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Here are some notes from the BSd Financial Advisory Committee - Parent Communications:

• Our Curriculum Tech Coaches and Curriculum Developers are funded by the Tech fund. The district currently has 19-20 of these employees. If they were moved back into the classroom, they would have to be paid out of the General Fund - and they would displace other teachers. Many people who gave early feedback thought cutting them would be a great way to solve the budget problem - but it could actually make it worse.
• Here's a tidbit about the Transportation fund: Money in the Transportation Fund can be used to purchase buses, but money to operate the buses must come out of the General Fund.
• When the BSD builds a new school, the law allows money from the Capital Projects Fund to be used to purchase new furniture, new textbooks, and new equipment for the new building. This is why new schools are usually outfitted with the latest and greatest desks while older buildings continue to use older items.
• The BSD works with 6 types of funding. We'll focus on the largest of these, the General Fund. The others: Technology Fund (from the local tech levy), the Building Fund (from our local Bond and the State), the Transportation Fund (from the Transp Levy and the State), our Debt Service fund, which helps pay interest on our bonds, and ASB funds, which belong to the students but which the BSD must monitor.
• Did you know.....the State can't tell us yet how much money we will have in the 2010-2011 school year? Once they determine the amount to be allocated to our district, then that amount determines the amount of Levy funds we can collect (regardless of what our generous voters have authorized). Makes budgeting tricky.