As we enter the holiday season I wish to give thanks to all of the wonderful support that we have received from our parents and community members during the past year. Your support has been very beneficial and greatly appreciated.
While the country’s financial crisis significantly affects our schools, careful financial management, community support and recent initiatives, have allowed us to deliver a balanced budget.
Entering this school year the district faced a potential deficit of $664,560 due to a $452,126 cut in state and federal aid and additional obligations related to post-employment benefits for recent retirees. We were able to balance the budget by making substantial changes to health care benefits saving the district $327,331 nearly 40% of the total cost; We also restructured our staffing through attrition and hired new staff that were lower on the pay scale than those retiring saving the district an additional $199,245; Perhaps the most significant area that we saved money in was the reduction of our open enrollment deficit $166,250. We are starting the second year of our laptop for every student in grades 4-8. Our Elementary is expanding its efforts in using the Daily Five Reading model and they are beginning to integrate the use of Ipads at the 4k-3 level. The entire school is benefiting from new curriculum aligned with the common core standards. Our children in kindergarten through eighth grade are enjoying having access to learning world languages such as Chinese, French, German, and Spanish via Rosetta Stone. The district has invested in staff development and cutting edge resources to help teachers use data to inform classroom instruction. All students grades K-8 are participating in a STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) education program through Engineering is Elementary grades K-5, and Gateway to Technology in grades 6-8.
Providing every Wheatland student with access to the best technology and instructional resources is essential for several reasons. First it fulfills the district’s philosophy,
“ The Board believes that the future will make great demands on the abilities of every person in our country. Meeting those demands will require a level of excellence greater than required in the past. …. every student will have the opportunity to realize his/her potential and to achieve the level of excellence necessary to the future.”
Second, providing access to top notch programming and resources makes financial sense.
In 1999 Wisconsin began open enrollment. Open enrollment allows parents to choose which school district they want to send their child to. By 2009-2010 Wheatland had 95 students open enrolled out. This equated to a $631,750 loss in annual revenue. Open enrollment was the key factor to the financial instability the district was feeling. In order to correct this we had to make significant changes to our school in order to keep our students and attract others, and we had to do it fast. I am pleased to report that after one year of these efforts we were able to reduce our open enrollment out numbers to 74 ($492,100) in 2011-2012 and we increased our open enrollment in. Our current open enrollment deficit now stands at a significantly reduced amount of approximately $325,850. I have been asked by several people, “How did the district afforded to pay for all of these initiatives?” The answer is two-fold, we have used grants to cover the short term loan costs, and the open enrollment deficit reduction will provide us with the needed monies to sustain the quality programming in the future. With open enrollment schools must operate more like a business in order to keep their students (customers), and sometimes you need to spend money in order to make money.
Our teachers and staff are dedicated to serving the children and families of the Wheatland community. Come into our school. You will see exciting classrooms and smiling and engaged children. I am proud to serve as the educational leader of Wheatland J1 School District.
Jason Tadlock
District Administrator
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