![]() In all, it appears the district will need to trim 15-20% of its expenses in the next two years.Ī significant part of those cuts will come from reducing the number of district employees because the district spends nearly 80% of its budget on staff. To avoid this fate, the district says it needs to significantly reduce the number of schools it operates and reduce staff. In statutory operating debt, districts are required to submit a plan to the state showing how they will balance their budget and pay off debt. ![]() With its bulked up reserves, the district now believes that it has until the 2025-26 school year until entering statutory operating debt, the technical term for a Minnesota school district that can’t pay its bills. Initially, the district expected to exhaust its reserves in 2023, but it says it was able to use federal pandemic funding to make up the gap between expenses and revenue without making significant cuts while also adding to its reserves. Even before the pandemic, the district has said this imbalance will eventually lead it to deplete its reserve funds, and, in common language, go broke. This imbalance has been exacerbated by declining enrollment, state and local funding that hasn’t kept up with inflation, and rising costs for both labor and purchased goods and services. The district contends that it has a structural imbalance between the cost of the services it provides and the amount of revenue the district receives. In fact, they can’t even agree about the basic facts of the district’s financial situation. ![]() The two sides have been unable to reach an agreement on bargaining issues. The two sides have been meeting in public since October, three and a half months after the teacher’s contract expired. Negotiators for Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers will go behind closed doors on Thursday for their first meeting with a mediator from the state Bureau of Mediation Services. Reprinted with permission from Minneapolis Schools Voices.
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