KUNA, Idaho — The Kuna School District will be reducing its spending by about 5.7 million dollars over the next two years. This massive budget reduction comes after voters recently voted "no" on a supplemental levy to help support the school system.
- The Kuna School District will be holding a meeting Tuesday evening, June 11th, at 6:30 pm where they will discuss the proposed budget cuts.
- More information about the meeting, including the agenda can be found here.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
Kuna schools will be seeing some major cutbacks in spending, after voters recently voted “no” on a supplemental levy to help support the school system.
“Over the next two years we need to reduce our spending by about 5.7 million. So we outlined some cuts for next year for them to consider, about 2.5 million and then we’ll have another 3.2 million to cut the following year,” says Allison Westfall, the Communications Director at the Kuna School District.
She tells me that the district is planning on cutting around 25 staff positions with the hope of relocating those impacted to other schools.
“The bulk of the savings come with staff, because 88% of our costs are in staffing… There’s some other cuts that would impact families a little more like a reduction in busing for athletics, field trips, things like that. An increase possible for participation fees," added Westfall.
Westfall tells me that the Hubbard Annex at Hubbard Elementary has a leaking roof and the fire alarm system needs to be repaired, maintenance items that would have been funded by the supplemental levy.
The district is considering closing the Annex to address those repairs and help reduce spending.
“There are about 200 students in kindergarten through third grade who are served here. In addition, there’s a community preschool and our special education preschool that are housed there. So if we close this annex, those are spaces there that are currently serving kids either preschool kids or other elementary kids that we’d need to find a place for them to be,” says Westfall.
If the Annex is closed those students would be dispersed to other schools in the system.
“There is concerns you know if we were to redirect these students to other schools they’d be very full,” says Westfall.
“Well I think, you know, classrooms are overextended as they are right now," says Casey Shaw, who has two children in Kuna schools.
He tells me that relocating kids to already full classrooms may have an impact on students and teachers.
“I think that’s just gonna add to more of the stress that they’re gonna have to see in the classrooms,” added Shaw.
