MARSHALL — The special election for the Marshall Public School District’s $2 million, 10-year operating referendum will be held on Tuesday. Community members can vote at Marshall Middle School from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., entering through the main doors.

The Independent sat down with Marshall superintendent Jeremy Williams, Marshall Director of Finance Sarah Kirchner and Marshall school board Vice Chair Sara Runchey on Tuesday for a detailed Q&A session regarding the referendum.

Tuesday’s ballot will read, “The school board of Independent School District No. 413 (Marshall Public Schools) has proposed to increase its general education revenue by $765 per pupil. The proposed referendum revenue authorization would be applicable for ten years beginning with taxes payable in 2026, and increase each year by the rate of inflation beginning with taxes payable in 2027, unless otherwise revoked or reduced as provided by law.”

Community members can also find detailed information at tomorrowstigers.org, or can contact Williams and Kirchner.

Q: Why is there a need for an operating referendum?

Williams: Inflation is a big piece of that. It hasn’t kept up. While we have gotten some additional funding from the state, it is not matching the needs we have … We don’t have another way to increase revenues.

Kirchner: This was coming. I’d say even prior to (2023), without that Covid (federal) funding in place, we would have been running deficit budgets at that time, too. That really goes back to 2020 through 2024, is when we were seeing for four years in a row that federal funding coming in through the pandemic … We found ways to make it work up until now.

Williams: (With Marshall dropping its last operating levy in 2018), we knew we needed an elementary school. We knew we had to open a new elementary school, the board was strong and that and our community was strong about that need. We just knew also at the same time, asking the community to support an operating referendum, renewing that and building an elementary school was a big ask at that time. So, we said we’d step back from the operating at that time … That was intentional, knowing we’d have to come back and do this eventually.

Q: Federal Covid funding has stopped, what operations was that money supporting?

Williams: A lot of the Covid funding was really targeted at individual student supports. So, looking at things like counseling, mental health supports, just that individualized instruction that became such a big thing in all the schools at that time … More than ever, the mental health needs are increasing at all of our sites with all grade levels … The counseling service that every school is part of, the social emotional needs and teachers at the schools are part of that, nursing services are part of all that … Post-Covid, we’re seeing it more than ever, those individual needs, assessing the kids and identifying, how are we going to meet those needs? Covid funds were intended to fund some of those things, so that’s how we carried those programs for that time. That’s why some of those (intervention, individualized instruction) programs are now, without some additional revenue, those things are included in our list of things that we cut.

Q: What support positions does the district have?

Williams: There are a lot of support positions in the district. A lot of that is mandated by IEPs (Individualized Education Program). All buildings have paraprofessionals. It’s a support staff that’s driven by an individualized student plan, and it’s based off that student’s special needs. … Sometimes it’s for behavior things, sometimes it’s for academic things, sometimes it’s for personal care needs that happen during the day. That’s in all buildings … We have kindergarten aids and preschool aids, where that’s more of a general helper in the classroom … The number of paras we vary from year-to-year based off the kids we have.

Williams: Because we’re that regional center, the special-ed needs, a lot of families are drawn to Marshall, because we have more services we can provide. We do see a lot of families with a student with higher needs come to Marshall from a neighboring district … (Also), Our non-English speaking families, that’s our fastest growing population in town … Each group has different sets of needs there too, and different sets of what supports we add.

Q: Where has the district seen a jump in spending the most, and changes with enrollment?

Kirchner: I would say it ties primarily to salaries. We do also have long term facility maintenance plans that are in place. We plan for those over 10 years, so we could have higher capital expenses on major project years. I know this year we put in a whole new HVAC system at our high school, but again, that’s a planned expense, and it’s not tied to the general fund. So really, the general fund expenditures that you’re seeing spikes in, it’s primarily tied to salaries … And it all ties to enrollment.

Williams: It’s (enrollment) been fairly consistent. It’s increased, then we’ve been down slightly over the last couple years, but it’s been fairly consistent.

Kirchner: More of it is tied to not just general enrollment, but our special-ed enrollment needs really fluctuate the need for those paraprofessionals.

Q: What are the potential cuts upon a failed referendum?

Williams: It’s across the board. Every grade level is going to be impacted, class sizes are certainly a part of it … About 20% (larger) more for classes is what we would say. It varies by grade, but we would look at every grade level and where we see the lower student enrollment, is where we would make the cuts.

Williams: Some of the support positions, we would evaluate those. Like we mentioned, paraprofessionals, we’re legally obligated to have some of those, so (it) wouldn’t be many paras (cut). We’d be looking more at the aids and the non-legally required positions. We’d be looking at CTE class classes … Middle school, we’ve added pathway classes … Those things that are great for kids, they’re a nice to have, not a need to have … Admin assistant positions, the general district-wide administrative support would be reduced.

Williams: Transportation is one that we’ve talked about. Currently, all of our elementary students at Parkside and Southview qualify for free transportation to school … We’re looking at adding a one-mile radius to that.

Runchey: (Smaller class sizes) have been something, I would say, of a source of pride, but also an understanding that we know our K through fourth kids do better with smaller class sizes … When we look now at the cuts, primarily those cuts are going to be to those areas, because the need for social and emotional (support), the need for counseling the needs of our students has grown exponentially.

Williams: There is nothing on that list (of cuts) that was an easy, ‘Yep, this has to go, because we have been very intentional about trying to meet what the state’s requiring, and what our families expect of us. I would put our education system in Marshall against any school district in the state. I think we do a great job for our kids.

Runchey: The cut list is public information. There’s been no hiding the ball here with what the thoughts are … When you’re talking about individual places, for example, admin team or benefit cuts or admin cuts, that’s not going to fill a ($1.8) million hole, even if we could do that … We’re at a shortage of teachers. We’re also short of administrative staff, people who have these licensures.

Q: What has the district done to lower costs?

Williams: Last spring, the board did some reductions of over $300,000 and really tried to avoid classrooms as much as possible. But, we’re at the spot (where) there is nothing else to eliminate that won’t impact classrooms in some way.

Runchey: We can’t predict what’s going to happen on the stage, economically. We, as the board, and our admin team and our teachers, every year look at a budget. Every year, we look at a projected budget, and that’s matched by month. What we need right now, is we’re seeking from the voters to keep the status quo of what we’ve been able to do for our district, for our students, for our kids, for our community.

Q: The district is using reserve funding to cover costs this school year and last year, why is that no longer a reasonable option moving forward?

Kirchner: Reserve funds are meant for emergency situations. I would say the district before me, coming on board has been very financially responsible, and did have a solid reserve fund built up. The reserve fund percentage balance was like 22%, and I know we have a minimum set by school board per statute, which was 8%. Do I think 8% would get us through a school year and allow us to cash flow properly? No. Because, we do have payout checks at the end of the school year. In June, we’re paying our teachers through the summer, that is a huge payroll for us, and I don’t think 8% of our fund balance would cut it. We’ve always stayed above that.

Kirchner: Last year, we had some staffing sessions just explaining the situation, asking for communication from staff … They did say, spend down some of that reserve fund balance. We wanted our staff to know that we were listening to them, so we went ahead with that. The last two years, we have spent down that reserve fund balance. I’m anticipating it could be down to 18% or so after our audit from last year … While spending down our funds has been doable the last two years, when projecting out what our fund balance would look like going into the next, say three to five years, it’s just not feasible to continue doing that. I don’t think it’s financially responsible to continue spending reserves on our general operating expenses.

Kirchner: I think our flood this summer was just a good example … To pay for this flood damage that we (had) to fix in one month before our kids come back to school. It’s those immediate needs that we have to be able to meet, to keep functioning and keep our schools safe and open for kids.

Q: Is there an option to reduce district benefits?

Runchey: We have to offer benefits. We do to our teaching staff … We do for our admin team, we do for our support staff … If you look at the list, nobody’s unscathed by the proposed cuts. But, cutting benefits, we didn’t feel made a lot of sense, because it would just potentially create a whole plethora of other downstream problems from doing that.

Kirchner: All of our bargaining groups do receive an employer contribution to their health insurance and dental insurance. It’s not just the administrative team. The administrative team does receive 100% participation by the employer, but that doesn’t mean that some of our staff aren’t receiving any contribution. It’s pretty significant. I actually ran the numbers last week, and I think the lowest percentage of employer contribution to health insurance was like 48%, so we’re almost paying half of everyone’s health insurance, if not more, depending on the group and how they’ve bargained across the years.

Q: Final remarks from the district?

Williams: I’m very proud of what we have going on in our district. I think we are meeting the needs of our kids better than we’ve ever met the needs of our kids, and our needs for our kids are higher than they’ve ever been … What we’re asking of the community is to maintain what’s happening there. We’re not adding something new … We’re not going to go pay for more benefits for administrators or something with this. We’re just maintaining what’s in place.