RSD Touts Savings to Public but Pleads Poverty to Teachers

Post date: Jul 18, 2011 11:06:29 PM

Last fall the Richland School District stated it had exceeded budget savings and Superintendent Busey pledged to use those funds to offset future budget shortfalls. The article from the KNDU/KNDO website was posted November, 12, 2010:

RICHLAND, Wash. -- Some school districts are operating in the red, but one district is in the black. After a review of the 2009-2010 school budget, Richland schools discovered they exceeded their budget savings.

Richland is the only school district in the Tri-Cities to have extra money in their budgets.

When state and federal budget cuts occur, the school district will be able to use that money to help cover the cuts.

Jim Busey, with the Richland School District says, "well, we're probably going to end up using some of those funds to offset some of the cuts that are coming our way at the state and federal level, so we're going to watch that very carefully. We're going to save that money and hopefully use that in a way to offset future cuts and revenue reductions at the state level."

The reason why the school was able to exceed financial expectations is because of growing enrollment. Busey credits his past school officials for properly operating the budget along with his staff for the extra money.

Whatever the amount in the budget reserve, it doesn't appear the District is willing to pay teachers their 1.9% State mandated pay decrease without major concessions to time and class size.