News Photo by Julie Goldberg Posen Consolidated Schools teacher Kristin Sharpe talks with students on Feb. 26 about a research paper they’ll complete for their sociology class.

POSEN — Posen Consolidated Schools staff finally saw a pay increase this school year after years of not having any raises.

The district was in a budget deficit from the 2014-15 school year to the 2016-17 school year, meaning its bills exceeded its income and it had no money in the bank.

To help the district get through that period and not take anything away from students, staff made a decision to not take a pay raise.

Posen teacher Kristin Sharpe said the pay freeze was staff doing what was best for kids.

“The whole thing was longevity and being here together,” Sharpe said.

“The biggest thing for us was our staff saying, ‘We can do this,’ and, ‘We can do this for less,’ and so we figured out how to make this work,” Superintendent Michelle Wesner said. “It was pretty much a concerted effort by our entire staff.”

THE DEFICIT PERIOD

The deficit period lasted three years for Posen.

It started the 2014-15 school year, when the district was $49,041 in the hole. It was then $65,006 negative the 2015-16 school year.

The lowest point for the district was the 2016-17 school year, when it hit a $71,260 deficit.

When a school district is in a budget deficit, the state requires school leaders to submit a deficit elimination plan for approval, according to the Michigan Department of Education website.

“We did set up a deficit elimination plan until we were out of deficit,” Wesner said, “and our plan was just tightening our belts.”

School leaders did everything they could to keep the cuts away from students.

If a teacher retired, they didn’t replace them. After two years of hoping to avoid it, the district cut the bus route to save money. The district knew that it wasn’t going to eliminate any programming.

“We didn’t want it to affect academics,” Wesner said. “We knew that that was the one area we weren’t willing to budge on. So, otherwise, we could have had a significant upswing and been out of the deficit even sooner, but it took us a couple of years after we knew we went in.”

“We weren’t in the position to cut programs, we’re down to the minimum,” teacher Hollie Kuchnicki said. “We needed to keep everything that we have to make sure that our kids have the best education possible.”

The district also sought more community support.

“We did actually go through and we talked to our sports boosters, and, one of the years, they were like, ‘You know what? We’ll do a little bit extra to help support the schools,'” Wesner said. “It was a whole community effort.”

STAFF IMPACT

Posen staff made a decision to not have any salary raises until the deficit was gone.

Sharpe said staff spoke about the pay freeze as a team. It wasn’t one person making the decision. Everyone was involved.

Kuchnicki said staffers didn’t see the pay freeze as a choice, because they felt like it was something they needed to do for students.

The staff also made a decision to not buy textbooks to help decrease costs. Sharpe said that, in her social studies classes, they used online resources, which started to become a new thing for schools then.

Staff stopped getting paid additional costs for helping with clubs.

“What we did was for the kids,” Sharpe said.

Wesner said Posen staff came together to do what was needed and the numbers show that. She said everyone worked together to make sure the district was back on solid ground after a few years.

“It wasn’t going to happen overnight,” she said.

A POSITIVE FUTURE

Posen has climbed back out of the budget deficit.

Its general fund fund balance was $83,597 the 2017-18 school year and $172,915 last school year. The district’s annual budget is about $2.4 million.

A fund balance is money a school district has in the bank to pay employees and cover bills between payments from the state.

The state kept Posen on a watchlist for a couple of years after the district came out of deficit to make sure its finances were in a good place.

The district is now off that watchlist.

“We’re stable, with a positive outlook, which is great, and we like that because we have very little debt, so we’ve done a very good job,” Wesner said.

More money has also been given to Posen from the state. Per-pupil funding has increased the past five years, from $7,126 the 2014-15 school year to $7,871 last school year.

“We’re being very frugal with our money, on top of them giving us more, then we’re able to save,” Wesner said.

Grants and donations have helped the district make Chromebooks available for every student without having to use district money.

Kuchnicki said Posen students don’t feel like they have less than students in other districts, though the district has been through financial troubles.

“Chromebooks in this day and age are important. You have to stay current. You have to provide students with that technology, so that they get the experience that every other student has in the public school system and surrounding areas,” she said. “When you go into Alpena, which is a much larger system, they’re using Chromebooks, so we need to be doing the same thing to make sure we’re offering what we can for our students.”