Crane board gives preliminary OK to $28.6M budget

A proposed budget of about $28.6 million was approved at a Crane Elementary School District meeting on Tuesday.

While the total amount of maintenance and operations funding increased slightly by about $150,000 from last year’s almost $28.4 million budget, Executive Director of Management Services Dale Ponder noted that the district saw decreases in other areas, including a significant drop in capital dollars.

Ponder reported that the district saw a reduction of about $750,000 to their capital funding, which pays for things like capital leases, textbooks, instructional materials, furniture, equipment, and technology.

He noted that in order to sustain the cut, they moved over $350,000 in carry forward dollars as well as about $160,000 from maintenance and operations to get the capital fund to a total of almost $989,000. Even with the shifting of funds, Ponder added that they will still have $270,000 less in their capital fund compared to their 2014-2015 budget.

In past years, he explained that it was more common for districts to move over capital dollars into their maintenance and operation fund as a way to look at increasing salaries, a trend that’s reversed in recent years.

About 90 percent of Crane’s maintenance and operations budget is dedicated to salaries and benefits, while the remainder pays for utilities, supplies, and purchased services.

The district also saw a re- duction in funding for the Gowan Science Academy to the tune of about $350,000 as it was required to be converted from a charter school to a district public school in accordance with new state statute.

In November of 2012, the governing board approved the charter documents to establish Gowan Science Academy, and it began operation as a district sponsored charter school in July of 2013.

However, in the spring of 2014, the Arizona legislature enacted a bill forcing district-sponsored charter schools to revert to district public schools or face closure.

Instead of closing the school, the Crane governing board unanimously approved the conversion of the campus into a district public school by approving a Charter Sponsorship Termination Resolution, to be effective June 30.

Superintendent Bob Klee said that the only change for the school will be that it will no longer receive additional funding from the state for being a charter school. He added, though, that the district is still committed to supporting the magnet school, which offers an education focused around STEM areas.

In another new ruling this year, districts are required to increase the percentage of budgeted funds for classroom spending, of which Crane anticipates a slight boost for 20152016, mostly due to various grants the district has received that support the classroom. The percentage of classroom spending in the combined categories of instruction, student support, and instructional support is now required to be included in the school district’s adopted budget on the page of the budget that the governing board members sign.

According to the proposed budget, the total amount of dollars in the classroom for the Crane district is at 65 percent. A total of 51.6 percent has been allocated to instruction, 6 percent to student support services, and 7.4 percent to instruction support services.

As far as property taxes are concerned, the district’s primary tax rate is estimated to increase from $2.1330 to $2.5580, which Ponder said was due to the increase in the amount of constituents within the district with unpaid property taxes when compared to previous years. He also added that the district’s secondary tax rate is expected to decreased from $0.9577 to $0.6735, due to a recent bond refunding. This puts the estimated combined total property tax rate for the district at a total of about $3.23, which is a small increase over $3.13 last year.

Also during the budget discussion, Ponder said that they saw an increase in student enrollment at 6,517 students for the 20142015 school year. Due to this increase, which he said was a record high for the district, he said that they plan to add four more full-time teachers to their staff in the fall.

The proposed budget will not be officially adopted until an upcoming meeting on July 14.