NV tries to make wise choices with limited budget

The Neelyville R-IV School Board approved a balanced budget Thursday night for the 2020-21 fiscal year, that includes both an increment and step added to staff pay, but also tightens in some areas.

The salary changes account for just under $57,000 in the budget.

Superintendent Debra Parish presented the school board with three proposed budgets: one with neither, one with only the increment change and one with both. The increment change accounts for most of that increase. She said there’s only about six employees who will see the step increase.

These salary increases, she said, are important because the district isn’t competitive with other schools in that area and needs to expand.

“We lose a lot of applicants that I believe would apply here because they would prefer maybe a smaller school atmosphere, but we just can’t compete salary wise,” she said. “That is one of the goals of the CSIP plan. How we do that right now, I’m not really sure, but we certainly want to become more competitive.”

Salary is the district’s largest expenditure.

Parish said the budget tightens in several areas to address funding concerns.

“I don’t anticipate there being overnight travel, at least very little,” Parish said.

The district already had forgone the scheduled purchase of new textbooks. Parish said based on the established rotation, it would be the high school English department’s turn to get updated curriculum.

“They couldn’t find any (new curriculum) that they wanted,” she said. “We just replaced some that were in bad shape. Of course, that may mean next year we’ll have a bigger textbook (budget).”

She also tightened the budget on supplies as compared to the 2019-20 budget.

Parish said the district will have two kindergarten classes and two third grade classes, each grade with an aid. Her hope is to only need to hire one and have the other move over from special education, since there’s expected lower need there because of class size.

The district transitioned a part-time custodian to full-time and is looking to hire an additional part-time custodian to help with sanitation concerns due to COVID-19. Parish said she plans to use CARES Act funding for those salaries.

Otherwise, she isn’t planning any staffing changes in the district, and will leave some positions open for right now.

“Would I not replace (staff)? Only if it were necessary,” she said. “I’ll be honest, we’re already to the bare bones. It would be tough. We already have a librarian who’s teaching three hours a day.

“I have an instructional coach at the high school level who teaches three hours a day. We’re already doing multiple jobs.”

Parish said the budget is balanced right now, but she anticipates some state withholdings. If the district needed to dip into reserves, she said, they could help with short-term issues.

“I told the staff we don’t want to get too comfortable; we don’t want to make unwise decisions, but it’s not as bad as I feared at this point,” Parish said.

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Neelyville

By the Numbers

(figures approximate)

Revenue — $6.4 million

Expenses — $6.4 million

Revenue

Local — $2 million

County — $95,600

State — $3.2 million

Federal — $1.1 million

Expenses

Salary — $4.6 million

Supplies/Material — $260,000

Textbooks/Library Books — $64,000