Art Rainwater on the reductions in increases to the proposed 2007-2008 MMSD Budget [1.4MB PDF]:

Dear Board of Education,
The attached is my recommendation for the service reductions required to balance the budget for 2007-2008. They are provided to you for review in advance of my Recommended Balanced Budget for 2007-2008 which will be available on April 12, 2007. You requested that the service reductions be presented to you in advance to provide sufficient time for your study and analysis.
After 14 years of continuous reductions in our services for children there are no good choices. While these service reductions are not good for children or the health of the school district they represent our best professional judgment of the least harmful alternatives.
The process that we used to study, analyze, consider and finally recommend the items presented was done over a period of weeks. We first reviewed each department and division of the district and listed anything that could be reduced or eliminated legally or contractually. We narrowed that list to those items which we believed would do the least harm to:

  • Our academic programs,
  • The health and safety of our schools,
  • The opportunities for student involvement,
  • Our ability to complete our legal and fiscal requirements

The document presented to you today is the result of those discussions. The items are broken into four categories:

  1. Reductions to balance the budget ( Impact Statements provided)
  2. Reductions analyzed, discussed and not included (Impact statements provided)
  3. Reductions reviewed and not advanced
  4. Possible revenues dependent on legislative action

The administration is prepared to provide you further analysis and respond to questions as we continue to work to approve a final working budget in May.

2006/2007 Citizen’s Budget ($333M+) for 24,342 students. I did not quickly notice a total proposed 2007/2008 spending number in this document.
UPDATE: Overall spending will grow about 3.4% from $333M to $345M per Doug Erickson’s article.
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