On March 4, the Edina School Board will meet to formally vote on one of Edina Public School’s cost containment plans. Current predictions of the unassigned fund balance, or “residual amounts in the general fund not reported in any other classification,” (defined in policy 702) in 2025 have shown a need for Edina to reduce expenditures by $3,620,000 to stay at the desired level of 6.90%—the same percentage as the unassigned fund balance at the end of fiscal year 2023. The impacts of the cuts on educational departments around the District have left families and school professionals concerned about its consequences for the upcoming school year.
Since Dec. 11, EPS has planned to reorganize the budget to prevent the projected shortfall. In a memorandum to Dr. Stanley and members of the school board, EPS Director of Finance and Operations Mert Woodard detailed the Fiscal Year 2025–2029 General Fund Forecast and highlighted a pressing issue in Edina’s current budget. If 2023’s spending levels are sustained, the overspending will cause the unassigned fund balance to not only drop below the required threshold of 6.00% from policy 702 in 2025 but also enter EPS into debt in 2029.
Woodard and Dr. Stanley have commented on the importance of not going into debt. EPS is one of three districts in Minnesota and one of 12 districts nationwide to receive a Moody’s credit rating of Aaa, indicating that the District excels in fiscal management. Because of the high rating, EPS pays lower interest fees, preventing negative impacts on the fund balance.
After being presented with Woodard’s recommendations on how to prevent the District’s spending from eventually breaching the 6.90% threshold of the unassigned fund, the school board began its cost containment process—the Budget Reduction, Reallocation, and Revenue Generation (BRRRG)—for the fiscal year 2025. From late January to early February, the District met with various stakeholders through conversations and surveys to “gather feedback, understand priorities, and generate cost containment ideas,” according to the Cost Containment Preliminary Recommendations document. As shown in the FY25 Cost Containment report, common responses from surveyors called for a reduction of positions in the District Office, ending unnecessary spending within extracurricular activities or classes within the high school, and the preservation of teacher salaries.
On Feb. 6, Dr. Stanley and Woodard held a virtual meeting for the BRRRG, where they explained EPS’s generation of revenue, the reason for the debt, and the District’s target budget.
Inflation has been cited by the District as a major factor in its impending overspending. The amount of money the District should receive per student taking into account inflation is $1,300 more than they get, which has left a hole of $12.8 million in unreceived funds.
With the current balance, 80.5% of the budget is directly allocated to student programs and services, and another 15.5% is allocated for maintenance and other fiscal costs. 3.9% is devoted to administrative and district support services, a number among the lowest in the metro. The EPS website detailing the BRRRG notes that a large part of EPS’s mindset when considering the budget is its dedication to maintaining current class sizes and programs. As a result, cuts to administrative costs are prioritized to avoid decreasing student-facing faculty; however, with a percentage as low as 3.9%, skimming it down even further becomes an increasingly difficult task, which Woodard mentioned in the BRRRG meeting.
Aside from cutting costs, the BRRRG also covers revenue generation. EPS hopes to increase its stream of revenue by raising the cost of high school parking permits from $300 to $445, the price of athletic event ticket fees and athletic and activities participation fees, and enrollment in the elementary schools. Some staff programs, construction endeavors, and other non-essential expenditures have also temporarily been halted.
While 80% of these cuts impact non-student-facing roles, facilities, programs, and other items in the District, the remaining 20%—equaling $724,000—has greatly reduced the number of full-time employees in media, physical education, choral, and nursing departments across EPS’s 10 buildings.
Many community members who spoke at the School Board meeting were alarmed by the section in the cost containment recommendations about reducing the EPS media specialist team. The proposed budget would cut the team in half and cause them to work part-time between buildings which generated distress concerning the logistics of managing the District’s nine media centers.
“How would I maintain the collection here and the collection in the other building? How do I work with all of you [students] and all of the teachers if I’m only here part-time?” EHS Media Specialist Sara Swenson said. “I love the students at EHS…I’m sad to think that’s going to change for next year.”
One of the biggest concerns regarding the proposed number of full-time media specialists being cut in half is the lost opportunities for students. At Valley View Middle School, a project that allowed students to create their own podcasts was made possible by the presence of a full-time media specialist. “I don’t want only half of my students to have an experience like this,” sixth-grade language arts teacher Katie Higgins said in the Feb. 12 School Board meeting. “I don’t want to limit access to this project because I can’t access the expertise of my colleague every single period of the school day.”
Another topic of community disapproval is the diminishment of licensed nurses, raising concern for families with students who require specialized medical support. Of those troubled is parent Joshua O’Brien, whose child was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2021. He described the relief that has come with the school nurses’ care at the Feb. 12 School Board meeting. “It’s the nurse’s job to understand if our child is going low on her blood glucose, or if she’s going high, and how to correct it,” O’Brien said. “This is not something you can do just by reading a brochure or looking online. This involves deep training.”
The Deaf and Hard of Hearing team within the Special Services program is also experiencing cuts and will lose one full-time employee, diminishing the number of teachers to two. Hawley Mathieson is one of three full-time D/HH teachers and was recently nominated for the 2024 Teacher of the Year award. If the budget cuts are approved, Mathieson—who has worked on the D/HH Teacher Team for the shortest amount of time—will lose her position. “[Students are] not going to get service with just two teachers from birth to graduation, it’s been taking three of us to do that,” Mathieson said in the Feb. 12 School Board meeting. “Most people think it’s just about hearing aids. It’s more than that, it’s about meeting those equitable and inclusive situations across our district.”
For more information about the FY25 budget planning, visit the District’s page.
