MORRISON, Ill. — Faced with rising expenses without an increase in funding, Morrison Community School District Superintendent Scott Vance said the district needs to start exploring budget cuts.
"Unfortunately, over the last couple of years, expenses are starting to exceed revenue," said Vance. "With the teacher shortage that most districts in Illinois are facing, we need to be more competitive with our salary and benefits package, which increases our costs significantly on an annual basis, which makes the difference between revenue and expenditures that much greater."
The district's three main revenue sources are local property taxes, state and federal aid. Vance said their federal aid went up significantly over the last couple of years because of COVID-19-related funds, but now it's starting to go back to normal.
The district's yearly budget is $14 million. According to the Illinois Report Card in the 2022-23 school year, $8.5 million came from local funding, $3.9 million came from the state and another $1.4 million was from federal funding.
"In order to increase those funds, our biggest option would be to either cut expenses or look at raising our taxes, which is something we're not really looking, interested in doing at this point," Vance said.
The district is now exploring cutting anywhere from $200,000 to $1 million over three years.
"So a minor thing would be a like a program, maybe a reading recover program, something along those lines, which is maybe a few thousand dollars ever year, versus a major cut, which would be a program like an athletic, band, extracurriculars, or in the worst case staff members," he said.
Morrison wants to avoid making major cuts and eliminating staff, Vance said.
"We are looking at the possibility of having to be more creative when it comes to how we hire and how we staff our buildings," he said.
For example, the district has several staff members retiring this year. Vance said they'd look to fill those positions internally and save money by not hiring someone new.
At the same time, it's not just the education fund expenses increasing. The district is facing rising transportation costs and its four school buildings all need maintenance work. One is nearly 30 years old and the other three are more than 50 years old.
"So all of those costs are rising and our income is not keeping up with that," Vance said. "Illinois funding is very unique in the fact that you have essentially nine separate checkbooks. And the law prohibits you from spending money from one checkbook on a different fund or different expense."
Meaning money that's spent on facility improvements can't be spent on salaries or student programs.
The Morrison School Board will be having discussions over the next month to decide how to proceed with the budget cuts.