An anticipated 1,228-student enrollment drop and lots of uncertainty are baked into the St. Paul Public Schools budget for the upcoming school year.
The school board formally approved the budget last week, but changes already are in the works. The Minnesota Department of Education is expected to say next month whether schools will be able to welcome students back in September amid the coronavirus pandemic. If not, schools will have to resume some level of distance learning, which will increase costs in some areas and savings in others.
“There may be multiple budget revisions that are done,” Chief Financial Officer Marie Schrul said.
The district’s $583 million general fund budget is up $4 million over last year’s budget. Lost revenue from a fifth straight year of significant enrollment declines should largely offset a 2 percent increase to the per-student state funding formula.
For St. Paul, projected state-funded K-12 enrollment is 35,458, plus 1,320 locally funded preschoolers.
The March agreement that ended a four-day teacher strike forced the district to spend $4.7 million on mental health staffers. The district also is hiring four teachers and 10 educational assistants in multilingual learning because of that deal.
Superintendent Joe Gothard said the teacher strike forced the district to make “some determinations that perhaps we wouldn’t have. … We didn’t factor that into our budget.”
Gothard’s strategic plan gets $9.8 million next year, up from $6.7 million in last year’s budget. An area of focus for the new year is college and career planning, with personal learning plans for all students. They’re also hiring five middle school writing teachers.
The district again will have 28 “learning leads,” who lead the school-level implementation of the strategic plan. Some of those jobs had been on the chopping block because of the teacher contract agreement but ultimately were funded with a combination of local and federal funds.
Areas with reduced funding include college-level high school classes and preschool administration.