Thursday, November 12, 2009

Statewide enrollment is up. More students than ever before qualify for free lunches. And more budget cuts appear to be on the horizon.

"There's a probability that we're going to be seeing between $150 and $250 per student cut in the funding we currently receive," says Dodge City Superintendent, Alan Cunningham. He says it's a bad combination for schools.

"We're to a point now where we don't believe as educators that we can provide the suitable education to students in Kansas that's required by the Kansas constitution."

Schools across Kansas are already fighting budget crunches, so what are they going to do when the state takes even more money away?

"We have deferred some additional expenses, cut some overtime, cut some extra duty activities, cut a lot of staff travel," adds Cunningham. "We've got to maintain a certain level of essential services and programs to meet the needs of those kids."

But Cunningham says in a district like Dodge City, it's tough when funding is so tight.

"Fifty percent of our students, or better, are non-native English speakers, and we see a high turnover among our students. We're going to have an excess of 300 additional students in just the last two years enroll in Dodge City public schools, but we've not added one additional staff member to help take care of those students."

Despite making so many cuts, the school board insists they won't come from certain areas.

"The priority is to keep programs and services that meet the needs of our kids and to keep at least the current staffing levels."

Cunningham also says there has been some good to come out of all this.

"It's been good for us to take a look at areas where we possibly could have and should have made some cuts," he says, "however, we believe we've done all the cuts we can do."