001and all of our board directors for being with us tonight. that are here with us here in the different way of how people are engaging. Our basic reality is that we have to embrace the fact that our district has our decade. Over the years, the district has made difficult and responsible decisions to manage challenges year after year. Tonight's conversation as we embrace this landscape is not about blame, but it's about acknowledging that reality and acting with integrity to secure a stable future. So this evening as we move forward a number of options not just one single options are designed to address some of the immediate budget shortfall but in addition we are bringing options to our consm. And so we can see that more stabilize our system. The work it has been guided by process.
002We started back in November. our principles reviewing enrollment and financial realities then move forward with our executive leadership team as well as discussions with the board sending out staff surveys um ELT and cabinet reflections and discussions all of that happen um throughout November and December and as we move through this work here tonight um we've also contin to get feedback by embracing audiences such as our families. They now have the opportunity to complete a survey as well. We're going to continue to um engage uh with our leadership team um community cabinet, teacher cabinet, our community coalition meeting um they will also be happening this week. And so um as we come to uh each of the sessions here over the next month, we're going to try to take a stepbystep process. I know it may
003feel fast but as The budget is something that we have seen as an issue over the years and I really do appreciate this board saying let's just lay it all out on the table. Let's be transparent um and let's just work through it all to be more stable going forward. And so again, when we come back on the 12th, we're going to have the opportunity to present more recommendations, talk a little bit more about consolidation, but we probably won't get to any type of formal decision until January 19th probably asks around the end of the month as it relates to consolidation. So tonight here for our outcome, we're hoping that you'll have the uh opportunity to understand the budget process um and the big picture of what's happening within our organization. Um as we move
004through the survey data, we asked a number of questions on the survey. We won't walk through all of them tonight, but we'll address the one that's pertinent to tonight's conversation. You do have access to all of the surveys uh feedback. We'll continue to rely on that survey. Um we're going to also um be looking for you to provide some feedback savings recommendations. Um when we first started out with this long list, this was a list that was generated by our staff members, our families, anybody to provide any ideas that they wanted, right? So we had a lot to consider. So we'll talk about our recommendations, what we are recommending, what we're not recommending. and also just understanding the process of any type of school consolidation and why that's important to us going forward. So again
005um as I get ready to turn over to our team I just want to emphasize that tonight is not about a final decision. No single outcome has been predetermined and a lot of discussions stills Okay, good evening everyone. So I am going to talk um first off about understanding our current reality. So we have two big goals um with our current budget and that's to create an understanding of the key constructional drivers that led to our current deficit and then surface some of the critical questions that will need to be addressed over the next month um to balance the budget and create a sustainable budget picture moving forward. So how did we get here? There are key drivers of the Cedar Rapids Community School District budget. So, we have structural deficits and for almost a
006def decade, we have been overspending and we've used one-time resources primarily ESERT to supplement our budget needs. Staffing was staffing was not right-sized with our enrollment declines and our facilities are inefficient and they were not appropriately adjusted to match our enrollment. Annual salary increases have outpaced our new money net of open enrollment changes and we've had significant open enrollment decline. So there are the key drivers um and so the first one I'm going to go over are the structural deficits. So if you look here um this is our FY18 to FY25 actual expenditures and then our FY26 budget is general fund summary. So if you look here in FY18 our surplus or deficit, we ran a $2.4 million surplus in 2018, but then in 2019 we had a a little over a million dollar deficit.
007FY 2020, we had a deficit of $4 million. And I'll show on a future slide how the district was not adjusting our budget to uh account for the deficit spending. And then in 2020, everybody knows COVID happened in March. And so we used our ESRE funding to supplement our budget in 21, 22, 23, and 24. And that's how we got significant uh surpluses. We used our um money to cover things like permanent building subs, Truman full day, and other uh staffing across the district. Um and that led to our uh surpluses. Then for FY25, we knew that that was going to be our bridge year to um we didn't do significant reductions and we used that the money that we had built in surpluses to cover uh deficit spending and we really didn't make any
008significant impact uh to our to our budget. And then at FY26, which is the current year we're in, last year in the spring, we reduced by uh over $8 million. But even with uh over $8 million of reductions, we're still anticipating a $4.7 million deficit. Um a lot of that is due to open enrolled out and charter uh enrollment growing. Um and we have to pay for that this year. So, our historical context for the 8-year decline, if you look at in 1314 where we were for uh enrollment and then we peaked at about 1718 and started to go down from there. And so, you can see um by the graph that we've had a significant decline in our enrollment. And then over to the right, it shows our reductions. So the district did make
009s significant reductions in 14 15 16 and 17 but since uh FY18 uh through FY23 we made no reductions although you can see that we had significant enrollment declines during that time in FY24 we decreased by about 500,000 FY25 a million and like I said for FY26 uh we reduced by $8 million. So that takes us to where we need to make reductions for FY27. So this slide shows the cost of enrollment declining enrollment in a financial trend. So if you look at our certified enrollment on 101 of 2020, we um lost 647 students. And if you take those 647 students times the district cost per pupil of $7,227, you get a a financial impact of 4 almost $4.7 million for FY22. And then in FY23, we lost another 166 students in the fall of
0102021. And so if you take your your 647 students times your district cost per pupil of seven school age students provide