The assistant principal position in the Ely schools would be eliminated in a series of budget cuts up for consideration this week.
Monday, the district’s finance committee recommended more than $640,000 in budget reductions and revenue enhancements to close a budget gap for the 2026-27 school year.
The meeting also included another bombshell number - with current projections showing more than 60 percent of Ely’s high school juniors and seniors will take classes at the Vermilion campus of Minnesota North College next year via the post secondary enrollment options program.
School board members will take action on the budget proposals at their next meeting, set for Monday, May 11 at 5:30 p.m., in the school’s media center.
The latest list includes an estimated $195,000 in savings from a four-day school week, which was approved last month, as well as a $213,480 donation from the Ely Educational Foundation.
A series of personnel moves related to declining enrollment are also on the list, including the elimination of the assistant principal position and assignment of some of those duties to teachers “on special assignment,” which would allow some of those teachers to retain fulltime status.
Current assistant principal Jeff Carey would return to the classroom and take on social studies and special education assignments.
Other reductions on the list include:
• One full-time elementary teacher ($75,374);
• Savings as the result of a leave of absence taken by a current teacher ($41,517);
• Reducing full-time science position from 1.0 to 0.8 ($30,757);
• Reducing full-time English position from 1.0 to 0.8 ($23,570);
• Savings realized by replacement of a full-time English position as a result of retirement ($21,213);
• Anticipated savings by reducing a social studies position from 1.0 to 0.8 ($14,369);
• Reducing media specialist position from 1.0 to 0.8 ($13,398);
• Reduction in lobbyist costs ($12,000);
• Eliminating assistant principal position and reassigning duties ($9,879).
The impact on current teaching staff is limited because of retirements, resignations and leave of absences, with longtime high school teachers Jim Lah and Tom McDonald set to retire, middle school Kaley Hotaling going on leave and science teacher Logan McLouth leaving the district.
The net result is a 1.8 FTE reduction in faculty, with new hires absorbing much of that blow by being hired at .8 FTE for their respective positions.
At the moment, what’s proposed brings total savings to $641,701, above the targeted goal for a balance budget for next year.
But finance manager Jordan Huntbatch told committee members this week that was purposeful, given last-minute budget adjustments the last two years that widened budget deficits.
“The last couple years we’ve been just below our target and then things happened,” said Huntbatch. “We’ve either added back or there were insurance changes or all these unknowns. We really wanted to be above $600,000 if possible while still maintaining everything we can.”
School officials also worked to reduce the impact on current staff.
“There were all of these moving parts of creative assignments to come up with reductions,” said superintendent Anne Oelke.
Oelke, who is also the district’s K-12 principal, will take on additional duties while delegating some others as part of the move.
Board members voiced concern about the workload, but Oelke indicated she was willing to give the new arrangement a trial run, while noting that the district continues to face declines in enrollment and future budget strife.
“If we’re losing 20-plus kids every year, we are going to have to cut every single year until we get some new revenue going,” said Oelke.
She also voiced concern that kindergarten registration is lagging and “not as great numbers as I would have hoped. We’re making calls to people who didn’t show up.”
Finance committee and school board member Tom Omerza said the cuts planned for next year are “more and more affecting the kids,” and the reductions come on top of a series of budget cuts made both for 2024-25 and 2025-26.
Omerza and other board members also voiced concern about the continued negative financial impact of PSEO, which allows juniors and seniors to take college courses at Vermilion receive high school credit at the same time.
“We have a pretty healthy group going there,” said Oelke. “It was at 40-some percent this year and well past 50 percent (for 2026-27).”
Among 85 high school juniors, 54 will participate in PSEO in 2026-27, totaling 63.5 percent.
Those numbers include both students who will take part in PSEO full-time and others who take at least one course at Vermilion.
Omerza said the financial challenges facing Vermilion and other public colleges show that those schools need high school students for their bottom line.
“They’re fighting year over year with their budget, so they’ve got to love PSEO kids,” said Omerza.
As a result of budget challenges, created by rising costs and drops in student enrollment, the district has been in the red the last five budget years, with losses in fund balance each year as follows:
• 2021 - $412,221;
• 2022 - $464,774;
• 2023 - $97,709;
• 2024 - $472,979;
• 2025 - $254,691. The district has already made major budget reductions in each of the last two years, but the impact in 202526 wasn’t as much as expected due to some higher than expected insurance costs and the addition of staff to accommodate student enrollment at a particular grade level.
Unfunded mandates including a new paid leave program and unemployment compensation for employees who don’t work during the summer have contributed to the budget strife, and school officials noted that state aid has not kept pace with inflation.
