The Budget Blues

This week's blog blast from the big boss is all about the dollars - or lack thereof. At Dr. H's Blog Commissioner Holliday writes,

In my 38 years of education and over 20 years as an administrator in charge of budgets, the past two years have been the most difficult budget situations I have ever encountered. As I travel across the state, I am hearing from local superintendents that they, too, are encountering very difficult budget situations. While the national economy has shown some signs of recovery, state and local revenues have not shown similar signs.

The fact that the national economy is rebounding is great news. The fact that the recovery is based on unprecedented levels of federal bailouts for banking (the industry that got us into this mess and is still spending millions on lobbyists to forestall regulation) is less comforting, particularly since federal stimulus funds are running out. I sure hope the recovery numbers look even better by this time next year and unemployment levels are back down. But we'll see.

Holliday optimistically suggests,

While we are in difficult times, I have every belief that our great nation can recover and our state and national leaders will find ways to ignite new growth in our economy. During these times, we must listen and work with each other rather than blame each other.

Oops. Too late.

As for the current situation, Holliday expects decisions on $20 million in cuts to education to be known by early January.

This is the latest reduction of six that have happened in the past two years. We have made the easy reductions. We have reduced the travel, the professional development, the textbooks, the costs that are not closely associated with the classroom. We have frozen all hiring at the Kentucky Department of Education. We have not filled vacant positions. We have eliminated every discretionary dollar that we can find.

Now, we have run out of options. We must begin to reduce some program dollars. There are no easy choices. Every program that we are reviewing has a strong constituent base that truly believes any budget cut would decimate the program.

We have established a few priorities for this next round of reductions. We are attempting to save positions in schools and districts. We are trying not to further reduce school safety or extended school funds, which have already been greatly reduced. We are looking at dollars that have not yet been expended in programs so the reductions will not require districts to make up the difference.

Hold on to your skivvies boys & girls.