Balancing a budget is hard; balancing a budget without any increase in revenue is even harder.

Andrea Gorla, assistant superintendent of business and finance of Dist. 428, said at the 2009-2010 Budget Workshop Wednesday that most school districts are looking at drastically cutting their budgets because the Consumer Price Index is flat for the next year. CPI measures the increase of revenue the district would receive from property taxes, Gorla said.

Gorla presented three options to the board of how the budget will look for Fiscal Year 2009-10, all three of which put the district in a deficit.

In the first option, Goral laid out $1.5 million in savings the district will have by implementing certain reductions to the current budget. Some of the cuts would include decreasing supply by 20 percent across the board and no district office building improvements.

Gorla said even with the reductions the district will still face a significant deficit.

“Next year is what we are looking at,” Gorla said to the board. “For the 2009-10 fiscal year right now, with the $1.5 million worth of reductions we just listed up there, we are still sitting with a $1 million deficit.”

In option two, Gorla and her team include the original $1.5 million in reduction but add an additional $602,000 in reductions. Gorla said the cuts were aimed at reducing costs that would not affect the quality of education the students will receive.

“We are trying to hit the things furthest away from the children,” she said. “For the most part these [cuts] are at the administration level.”

With option two, the deficit for next year would be $399,468, Gorla said.

Option three includes both reductions from options one and two but adds several new teachers based on the Full Time Equivalency. One FTE equals one full-time employee, Gorla said.

If the board were to approve option three, the district would be looking at a $604,502 deficit for next year.

Gorla said a bright side to the budget deficit is General State Aid, which allocates a dollar amount per student. Gorla said a $1 change in GSA foundation level can increase or decrease GSA revenue by $5,429. She said if the GSA were to increase from $130 base to $225 for next year then the deficit for option three would only be $90,000.

There was a general consensus among all the board members that they would like to see what the district would need to cut in order to have a balanced budget.

“I see three scenarios here that still put us in the hole,” said Vice President Andy Small. “May I suggest a scenario that puts us out of the hole? It may be tough to swallow, but this would be the time to make that tough decision.”

Superintendent Jim Briscoe said he understood the board’s perspective and would go back along with Gorla and her team and come up with a balanced budget scenario to present before the board May 4.