Bemidji school board slashes $1.5 million from next year’s budget

The Bemidji school board is making steep cuts to the district’s budget for next year, voting unanimously last week to reduce spending by more than $1.5 million. School officials acknowledge that the spending cuts will be felt in Bemidji’s classrooms, affecting students, faculty and the kinds of programs the district offers.

Bemidji Schools superintendent Jeremy Olson said he and the school board tried to minimize the impact on classroom learning. He noted that classroom spending accounts for about 65 percent of the district’s budget, but only a little more than half of the budget cuts will be felt in the classrooms. The other cuts will come through attrition, consolidation in school administration, and other non-classroom related reductions. For example, one elementary school principal's position is being eliminated, as two schools will share a principal next year. 

Nonetheless, Bemidji School Board member Todd Haugen acknowledged the budget cuts are painful.  

"These actions we've just taken effect people’s lives, and we take that very seriously,” he said. “None of us enjoy this process of cutting back, but it's what has to happen for our school district to continue." 

Bemidji Supt. Olson says the cuts were needed because state aid to the district hasn’t kept up with inflation.

“Since 2019 the average (state) revenue (increase) has been 2.36 percent. Since 2019, the average expense increase to the district has been 3.23 percent. That's a problem,” he said. “This is why we are looking at making reductions.”

Olson said that if state aid had kept up with inflation the district should have received 18.7 percent more funding this school year. And he said that if that had happened “we would not be having these discussions.”  

In addition, board members pointed to the failure of referenda in 2020 and 2021 which could have raised more operational funding for the schools. 

Prior to the board’s decision during the public comment portion of the meeting, library media specialist Shirley Lipscy spoke out against some of the cuts. 

Lipscy noted that only about half of Bemidji’s elementary and middle school students are reading at grade level, and suggested budget cuts could drop reading scores even more. 

“The proposal is to cut the library program even more,” Lipscy said. “Our library program is what helps fuel literacy, along with our English teachers, along with our classroom teachers. We need to be growing these numbers, not cutting back on programs.”   

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