It was standing room only for the New Ulm School Board special meeting, Tuesday. Concerned parents and teachers attending the meeting to learn how the district planned to make nearly $2 million in cuts for next year’s budget.

NEW ULM – In front of a room full of concerned parents and teachers, the New Ulm School Board made the decision to cut the budget by $1.98 million.

The nearly $2 million in cuts included a combination of elimination and reductions of both school programs and staff.

Superintendent Sean Koster said that, with these recommended cuts, the administration attempted to make cuts across the district in each school building, rather than placing them in a single department.

“I am hopeful that looking at cuts this deep will help stabilize where we are at,” Koster said. “I do not think anyone sitting in this room takes these conversations lightly.”

The New Ulm School District has been deficit spending for three years. Declining enrollment is part of the reason for the deficit. For a decade, New Ulm Public School has averaged 150 kindergarten students, but last year there were only 135 kindergarten students, with a similar number this year. Since the district receives approximately $10,000 in funding per student enrolled, a declining enrollment of 47 students is equal to a $470,000 revenue reduction.

At the same time, the school faces rising cost from employee contacts, insurance and additional state mandates and requirements.

Koster said a lack of funding from the federal and state governments was also a factor in the cuts. It was the reason around 40 Minnesota schools go out for a referendum every year.

The board allowed a public comment section before the start of the meeting. Amie Holkesvig, a school staff member and parent of students in the district expressed deep disappointment in how the board chose to handle the budget cuts. She believed the board should have taken action to resolve the deficit concerns earlier.

“The staff and the parents in this district are not truly cared for or valued,” Holkesvig said. “This district has known that we are in a financial crisis for quite some time. We also knew that enrollment numbers were dropping. These are things that have been discussed for quite some time by the board and administration, but the options were only presented to us less than two weeks ago.”

Holkesvig believed if the board cared about staff’s opinion, they would have sought recommendations and opinions months ago.

Holkesvig was only allowed two minutes to comment. In an email to The Journal, she expanded upon her comments. She wished to recognize the hard work of school secretaries, nurses, health assistants, specialist teachers, special education teachers, paras, speech-language pathologists, school counselor, kitchen staff and janitors.

Holkesvig said these are all people who work directly with kids in the district but have no say in the budget decisions. She asked the public to speak out and change the system to allow people working directly with students to have a voice on district policy.

Shaun Luker, a parent of an 11th and 9th grader in the district, said his kids were consistently active in choir, musicals, and plays. Luker said he was also a 2001 graduate of the school and he too participated in the choir and band.

Luker said 12 years ago he advocated for the construction of the new high school. He wanted to advocate for music and the arts.

“Music is an intricate part of a young person’s education,” he said. “Our community’s historic commitment to music education has developed so many students to success in their future music career, but also in everyday life.”

He urged the board not to cut staffing from music and the arts because one it is gone, the school might not get it back.

Following the public comments, Koster walked the board through the list of budget cuts and reductions line by line.

The review began with the district reductions, which included $552,000 in cuts. The largest reduction from the district budget were three custodial staff, who reduced the budget by $183,000. District reduction also called for the elimination of a technology support specialist at $78,000. The district’s technology budget was also reduced, but the school plans to use $150,000 from the German Land Trust to offset some of the expense. The last time the school used funds from the German Land Trust was 2011.

School activities saw a $73,000 reduction, with cuts going to the cross country, dance and girls’ golf. Koster said the school is looking into forming a co-op with other area schools for these programs. In addition, the school will be raising admission fees. Season passes and student activities fees will also increase.

At the High School, $486,450 in reductions were recommended. Fine arts programming saw the largest reductions. The recommendation was to cut art by 0.8 full-time equivalent (FTE) for a $80,000 savings. Music will be reduced by 0.75 FTE or $75,000.

Koster said the Middle School music program would be cut by 0.25 FTE or $25,000. The idea was instead of fully eliminating a music teacher position, the school would reduce the position from two buildings to equal one equivalent full-time teacher.

The high school assistant principal position would also be eliminated, cutting $50,000 from the budget.

At the Middle School, multiple paraprofessional positions would be eliminated and reduced. Total cuts to the Middle School were $191,750.

For Jefferson Elementary, the recommendation was to cut one section from first, second and third grade. This reduces the budget by $300,000. One school counselor would also be eliminated for $50,000. The total budget reduction for Jefferson is $391,000.

Washington Learning Center (WLC) would see the reduction of one kindergarten section for $100,000 and the reduction of two general education paraprofessionals for $100,000. The total cuts to WLC are $294,000.

School board member Jonathan Schiro said he appreciated the emails he had received from the public on this issue. He said the majority of the emails were supportive and passionate about maintaining specific programs.

Schiro appreciated the administration’s goal to limit the reduction to music and fine arts programs. He acknowledged that any cut would hurt the program, but he appreciated that it was a reduction of only a single full-time equivalent music teacher.

Board member Melissa Sunderman said she appreciated that the cuts were spread across the district rather than hitting a single department. She added that in addition to declining enrollment, many school districts were facing funding shortfalls from the state and federal government.

Sunderman said she visited Washington, D.C., with a rural Minnesota organization last week to ask legislators to increase school funding.

“I spent hours in seven different congress peoples’ offices discussing this exact thing,” she said. “They did listen, they did take notes, but I don’t know how far that will go.”

Sunderman said she originally joined the school board to make a difference and it was hard to make these cuts.

“I really do hope the funding does change and the federal and state levels,” she said.

Board member Sarah Leslie said she received 100 emails on the budget and she did take them to heart and understood the advocacy parents had for arts and music.

“This is not a referendum on anyone’s passion, abilities, or dedication to the schools or how we feel about students,” Leslie said. “We have to be strict with tax dollars. This is your money and we don’t have control over how much of that we are getting.”

Schiro introduced the resolution directing administration to make the reductions and discontinue the recommended programs and positions. The resolution passed with Sunderman abstaining.

The next school board study session will be held at 5 p.m. Thursday, April 9 and the next regular school board meeting will be at 5 p.m. Thursday, April 23.