School leaders weigh in on cuts

In the wake of the state’s special legislative session to address budget issues, a pair of local school leaders recently weighed in on what any actions could mean for their respective school districts.

Jamie Widner serves as the Melrose Municipal Schools Superintendent.

“The only effect that the budget cuts will have on us is through the reduction in unit value,” he said. “Statewide, the legislature approved a 1.5 percent reduction in unit value, which comes to approximately $61 per unit or $37 million statewide.

“At Melrose, we have a little over 500 units, so the effect, literally, is a reduction in our State Equalization Guarantee (SEG) funding formula distribution of approximately $31,000. For a little school like ours, that is a substantial amount, but this cost is equalized across the state with all public K-12 schools. For our purposes, this is the best scenario that we could hope for out of this special session.”

Widner said all the superintendents were “on board” with the final budget cuts that were approved with the adjournment of the special session, but he added a caveat.

“However, I will caution that we do not agree with cutting education, because we are not sufficiently funded as it stands today,” he said. “We have withstood so many cuts over the past six years that many of us can’t handle any more cuts. As fixed costs continue to rise, we continue to lose ground on our funding from the state. We must look at revenue enhancements from other sources so that the offset of oil and gas downward trends (like we are seeing currently) can be covered.”

Meanwhile, Grady Municipal Schools Superintendent Ted Trice said his district is currently in the legislative session evaluation process.

“As of today (Friday) we do not exactly know what the financial impact will have on our district directly,” he said. “There are cuts in education, but I do not want try to make an educated guess how much that will be until we receive more information.”

Clovis Municipal Schools and Texico Municipal Schools superintendents did not respond to inquiries at press time.