School district’s $80 million budget spares alpine ski team, keeps school resource officers

Facing a $2.1 million deficit, the district made some significant cuts, and will make more severe cuts next year. But motivated individuals saved funding for the ski team and the Laramie PD.

The Albany County School Board approved an $80 million district budget for the current fiscal year, cutting various costs and promising to make more cuts next year.

The goal of those cuts is to “rightsize” the district, sort out its messy accounting and alleviate the current $2.1 million deficit brought on by declining state appropriations.

The district has cut that deficit considerably, but saved several items from the chopping block in the lead-up to the final budget vote Wednesday.

“We are keenly, keenly aware that when items are cut from a budget, it has an impact on a person,” Superintendent John Goldhardt said earlier this month. “And those impacts were not taken lightly by the central office leadership team or trustees.”

The new budget eliminates two positions: a receptionist and a communication coordinator, both out of the central office.

And teachers across the district will effectively be making less this year than they did last year.

“Employees are going to be paying 13.5 percent more on their insurance,” Goldhardt said. “They're not getting a step increase (in pay) and they've lost their MetLife insurance, and if they want to keep it they have to buy that on their own.”

The budget also saves money by:

• Allowing the lawns at Old Slade to go unwatered (saving $40,000)

• Allowing the lawns at the old high school to go unwatered (saving $100,000)

• Reducing department head stipends (saving $46,000)

• Eliminating 5th Grade band and orchestra (saving $40,000)

• Eliminating the B teams at Rock River School, University of Wyoming Lab School, and Laramie High School volleyball and basketball (saving $34,000)

• Recognizing “efficiencies” at Rock River School (saving $9,000)

• Instituting a 50 percent reduction in cellphone allowances for administrators (saving $35,000)

• Reducing field trips (saving $100,000)

• Committing to greater energy efficiency (saving $75,000)

The district is also sorting out discrepancies in earlier budgets that showed incorrect totals or grouped items inappropriately.

Despite consideration, the district will not be axing meal vouchers for traveling sports teams ($45,000), nor will it be cutting the alpine ski team ($29,000) or the Laramie Police Department-led School Resource Officer program ($75,000).

Goldhardt told the board the district will have to pull more than $1 million from its reserves to cover costs this year. He said spending from reserves is not sustainable and that next year will require more difficult cuts, but it could be worse.

“That ($1 million) is down significantly from $2.7 million when we started a few months ago,” Goldhardt said.

Trustee Nate Martin said it’s been a “wild ride” as the trustees and the district have started to get a handle on the budget.

“The ride is going to get stranger and less comfortable,” Martin said. “Over this next year, when we come and try to cover this $1.1 million shortfall that we're facing, we're going to suggest cutting lots of different things. And we're just going to throw them out there and we're gonna see what it looks like.”

Martin encouraged members of the public to get involved with that discussion and advocate for the programs or other expenditures they want to save.

“But if you come to us and you say, ‘Don't cut coaches,’ if you come to us and say, ‘Don't cut athletic meals’ — please provide an alternative about what should be cut,” Martin said. “I'm not saying that to be cheeky, I'm not saying that to be confrontational. I'm just saying that we are going through a process where we have to cut $1.1 million out of the budget. And so we have to cut something.”

Alpine skiers save their team

Cutting the alpine ski team would have netted the district nearly $30,000. But students and parents rallied against that cut, voicing their discontent during the school board meeting Wednesday and ultimately persuading the trustees to put their funding back in the budget.

Basecamp owners Jodi and Alec Shea, who have a child on the team, gathered folks together when they learned the program could be cut. Jodi told the trustees the team serves about two dozen students — several of whom might not have another opportunity to take up skiing.

“In the last year, we had students that participated that have never been on a set of skis before,” she said. “(And) there are kids that participated last year that have been skiing since the time they could walk. So it allows an opportunity for kids of all experience levels of skiing to get involved in something that's very unique to our community.”

The Sheas said they knew they wanted to fight the imminent budget cut, but they also wanted to work out a longer term solution.

“We can't come here tonight, and say, ‘Fund us for another year,’ without having a plan in place,” Alec Shea said.

For example, a booster club could host fundraising events and raise private donations, making the team less reliant on district funding. That would be something of a natural extension of the Sheas’ existing commitment to the team. Alec said Basecamp provides skis and other equipment, while also working with companies like Atomic Skis to provide more.

This argument was persuasive to trustees, who said it would be easy to give the Alpine Ski Team another year of funding, knowing that parents are planning to build an alternate foundation for the future of the team.

“If this self-sustaining plan starts to form and take direction, I don’t see why this would ever have to be cut,” Trustee Mary Alice Bruce said.

Trustee Emily Siegel Stanton added it would be unfair to target a specific sport.

“Everything we do to cut from the budget is going to impact people’s jobs and it’s going to impact programs that are important to people,” she said. “But I’d like to see those changes be more equitable across the district — for example, telling all of athletics that they need to cut 10 percent from each of their budgets and letting coaches come to us with cuts.”

The trustees voted unanimously to keep the ski team’s funding in the budget. But Martin said the board would soon have to take off its rose-tinted glasses.

“We’re going to be talking about laying off significant numbers of teachers over the next year,” he said, adding that he recognized the importance of team sports and everything they do for the young people involved. “The same thing can be said about virtually everything that we fund in Albany County. You will have a privileged constituency who has the capacity to organize on behalf of your preferred program. It’s going to be, over the next year, a bunch of dueling constituencies talking about where the ax is going to fall.”

Laramie police save their funding

The ski team wasn’t the only program to escape the chopping block. Laramie Police Department leaders convinced district officials to keep school resource officers on the books.

Last month, school administrators and trustees appeared to be in agreement that the school resource officer program was too expensive and ineffective.

Until now, the district has paid LPD $150,000 a year. But officers are seldom on campus — meaning they still have to be called any time there’s an incident — and when they are on campus, their presence can distract students or make them feel unsafe.

Trustee Carrie Murthy, a professional education researcher by day, even shared studies with the board showing there is no clear evidence to suggest SROs stop or discourage school shootings, but there is evidence showing negative effects on students — particularly students of color and students who have had negative interactions with law enforcement outside of school.

But Superintendent Goldhardt and School Board Chair Kim Sorenson both met with Laramie Police Chief Brian Browne, who negotiated to keep half of that SRO funding in the budget and to not ax the program entirely or just yet.

“Chief Browne was very responsive and concerned,” Goldhardt said. “One of the issues they’ve had this year is they’ve not had their full complement of officers. By the end of this month, they will have their full complement of officers. And he did make a pretty clear commitment that he did want to make this better.”

Sorenson added the SRO program used to be more effective, but he said that as younger, less experienced cops replaced older veterans, the program “deteriorated.”

“I’ve seen what it’s supposed to be,” Sorenson said. “And I know that (with) our new police chief, this may not have been on the front burner for him when he was first hired. I guarantee it’s on the stovetop now.”

So when Goldhardt presented the final district budget Wednesday, it included $75,000 for the LPD.

“$75,000 is a teacher’s salary”

But that line item inspired a lively debate between trustees about the utility of the program.

“We’ve been paying $150,000 a year for this program and receiving substandard service that everybody agrees is not adequate,” Martin said. “There’s been questions about the overall benefit of the program in the first place … In my mind, $75,000 is a teacher’s salary.”

$75,000 could be a teacher’s salary. It’s also the total amount saved by the district in cutting 5th grade orchestra and band and B teams across the district.

And yet it’s half of what ACSD No. 1 paid LPD last year. According to trustees, LPD is hoping the Laramie City Council can devote another $75,000 specifically for the school resource officer program, bringing the total on their end back up to $150,000.

Trustee Beth Bear said she was willing to give the LPD another chance to turn the program around; Trustee Steve Gosar said it wouldn’t hurt to give them one more year, given that most parents want SROs in schools and that the board can still cut the program when they take up the budget again next year.

Gosar added that he wasn’t convinced by the research casting doubt on SRO programs.

“How many of us drive down the street and just the sight of a police car makes you check your speed or slow down?” he said. “The presence gives pause to what you’re doing. How could a study say that it’s not effective? How does it even know that it wasn’t? How many school shootings were averted because they knew there was a school resource officer?”

This is a difficulty outlined in various studies and analyses on the effectiveness of SROs.

The research does not say that SROs are ineffective. Rather, that there is a lack of evidence supporting SRO effectiveness when it comes to stopping school violence.

“There is currently very little rigorous evaluative research on the effects — in terms of school safety — of having a police presence in schools,” one research brief states. “However, what evidence exists to date, as summarized by syntheses of the available studies, fails to support a school safety effect.”

What the evidence does show is that the presence of SROs could have other impacts beyond school safety and that some of these impacts are negative.

Given the wide variety of home lives and life circumstances experienced by students, a uniformed officer doesn’t have positive connotations for everyone. For students who have had adverse interactions with police outside of school, encountering law enforcement on campus can hurt their sense of safety or their ability to learn.

Trustee Carrie Murthy originally shared some of this research with the board and was one of the main voices opposing the $150,000 annual payments to LPD during a board meeting last month.

But she was absent from the meeting Wednesday — and her absence very likely decided the vote.

An amendment to remove the $75,000 from the district budget failed on a tied 4-4 vote. Murthy could have cast the deciding vote had she been present, but the special meeting conflicted with “prior out-of-town commitments,” she said when reached via text Thursday.

“Keeping kids safe is our highest priority,” Murthy said. Based on the research, it is clear that focusing on mental health supports and strong student-adult relationships in the school are incredibly important to a safe and supportive school environment. However, the research does not support the idea that SROs make schools safer. In addition, our current SRO arrangement has not been implemented well.”

Murthy added there are “effective models” of SRO programs, particularly those that stress building relationships with students. But she said it’s unlikely the district will receive better service for half the cost.

“Ultimately, the SRO arrangement is something we will be watching and evaluating carefully over the next year to determine whether it is effective and making a positive impact in our schools,” Murthy said. “If not, it’s certainly on the table for us to reconsider next year.”