The tax is projected to bring the school district into the black by 2014, according to Dave Thompson with the state auditor’s office. If approved, the 5-year levy would cost the owner of a $100,000 home an additional $427, or $35.60 a month, according to officials.
While Little Miami voters approved a bond issue in 2006, allowing the district to build two new schools, the last operating levy they approved came in 2002. Since then, voters have shot down seven consecutive tax issues. As a result, the district needed to borrow $10 million to date to keep daily operations running.
The other two options Thompson presented to the commission included operating levies of 12.95-mill and 14.95-mill.
Also at Thursday’s meeting, Superintendent Dan Bennett presented a series of cuts aimed at moving the district toward only paying for the minimum that’s required by state education standards, as directed by the commission.
Bennett said the district’s school board and its administrative staff do not support those cuts.
“This isn’t about the money,” he said. “This is about us having to operate the way the state is telling us to operate.”
The budget cuts include closing Hamilton-Maineville Elementary School and shifting all its students to Salem Twp. Elementary.
The resulting realignment will see students in pre-school to second grade at Salem Twp. Elementary, with third and fourth-graders at Little Miami Intermediate School. Students in fifth, sixth and seventh grade will attend Little Miami Junior High, with those in grades eighth through 12th at Little Miami High School.
Realigning to four schools also will boost teacher-to-student ratios to 25:1 in kindergarten to fourth grade, 30:1 in fifth through seventh grades and 35:1 in eighth through 12th grades, Bennett said.
The $1.2 million in cuts also include eliminating 15 certified staff positions and 1-1/2 administrative staff positions, reducing the amount of credits for graduation from 24 to 20 and applying for any and all waivers available for state mandated measures such as all-day kindergarten and body-mass-index reporting.
Despite other published reports, the cuts will happen even if a levy is passed, Bennett said.
About 90 district positions have been eliminated since 2009, resulting in dozens of layoffs of teachers, support aides and other school employees.
Little Miami’s school board enacted $7 million in cuts before the state oversight commission took control of the district’s finances earlier this year.
Mary Beth Hamburg, the school board’s vice president, told commissioners she understood the role of the commission is to do whatever is necessary to ensure the district has a balanced budget.
“Making additional cuts is one way to get us closer to that goal,” she said. “However, I beg you to consider that any further cost reductions will most likely have the consequence of pushing that balanced budget even farther away.”
Commissioners said the cuts are a necessary part of an equation projected to stabilize the district’s finances.
“You have to do what you have to do and hope that things will get better in the future,” said Mike Watson, the commission’s chairman.
Fellow commissioner Cole Bieler agreed.
“Unless the reductions in expenses are put forth, what other alternative is there?” Bieler said.
The audience in the Little Miami High School auditorium during Thursday’s commission meeting included Little Miami school board members, who announced a Jan. 8 all-district meeting to discuss the possibility of district dissolution in two years.
Scheduled for 9:30 a.m. to noon at the Oasis Golf Club and Conference Center, 902 Loveland-Miamiville Road, is aimed at discussing the timeline for a contingency plan to be carried out if voters reject operating tax levies next year.
Invited to attend are school board members, superintendents and treasurers from the seven area districts in Warren, Hamilton and Clinton counties that border Little Miami schools.
“Our primary goal of the January 8 meeting is to share as much information as we have about our situation and how it may affect your districts,” school board members said in the letter.
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