Tulsa World: Ballard: Tulsa schools face significant budget shortfall

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Ballard: Tulsa schools face significant budget shortfall

Keith Ballard

By ANDREA EGER World Staff Writer
Published: 11/13/2009 9:18 AM
Last Modified: 11/13/2009 5:56 PM

Related Story: School funding reduced yet again

Tulsa Public Schools’ monthly funding from the state came in $1.1 million below projections for November, leading Superintendent Keith Ballard to announce a host of dramatic budget reductions at a Friday morning press conference.

Saying that TPS will likely be cut the “catastrophic” amount of $8 million to $10 million total over the remaining months of 2009-10, Ballard said the school district has no other choice but to freeze all hiring, eliminate substitute teachers, curtail travel spending and schedule furlough days for administrators and support workers.

He warned that a significant number of jobs will be eliminated by attrition and lay-offs next summer if state funding cuts are as deep as expected - or worse.

“Eighty-five percent of our budget is in personnel costs. Where do you get $10 million from?” Ballard said. “We will do everything we can to protect the classroom this year and we will attempt to protect jobs this school year ... If we lose $10 million, we will have to make dramatic reductions in personnel for next year. The long-term impact will be that we have larger class sizes.”

The Oklahoma State Department of Education warned districts yesterday that lower-than-expected state collections would mean a 7.11 percent cut in November’s funding disbursement.

TPS had already seen its state allocation reduced by $1.4 million through October.

Ballard said administrators had already cut planned expenditures for 2009-10 by $1.5 million. TPS will have to dip into its funding reserve or “carryover fund,” to cover much of the additional shortfall in state revenues and balance its budget, which is required by law.

“We can’t get to $10 million (in spending cuts) this year. We have a fairly paltry reserve balance and what we will probably have to do is dip into that. Then, whatever (amount) we lose this year, we will have to cut before next year,” Ballard explained. “The first place we will look is in this building (the Education Service Center) and administrative jobs in other buildings.”

State Superintendent Sandy Garrett has said some relief for school districts could come from the state’s Rainy Day Fund, but even that “has its limits on what you can use.”

Ballard on Friday called on legislators and other state officials to look at all available funds and to “think about the consequences we are having on students.”

By ANDREA EGER World Staff Writer

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Reader comments for this story have been moved to the most updated version of the story, now under the headline "Funding crisis looms," which was published on 11/14/2009. So far, 107 comments have been made.