Havre school board hears budget update

Havre Public Schools administrators and trustees heard an update on proposed budgets for the upcoming year, which were roughly the same as this past year, although some buildings and departments saw increases or cuts in their budgets and the subject of inflation was brought up by multiple administrators.

Havre Superintendent Craig Mueller discussed during last week’s planning meeting his own office’s budget, which covers public relations, travel, supplies and, most of all, legal and technical services.

Mueller said legal and technical services is their most expensive budget item so his office has made a point to track it carefully throughout the year.

He said the budget also covers employee recognition, which they spent more on than expected this past year with their Back To School project, so they’ve taken some money out of the travel budget to address that.

He said, in the past, there was money in the budget to pay for administrators to participate in a national conference, but for the last four years that hasn’t been possible.

Mueller said he’d like to bring that back at some point, but for now it doesn’t look like they’ll have the money for it.

He also talked about the buildings and grounds budget, which saw some increase in areas like custodial supplies, which they are going to use to set up a rotating schedule of supplies to use and replace so they’re not buying things when they need them immediately and have a better stockpile they can draw from.

Assistant Superintendent Brad Moore said they’ve also had to spend a considerable amount on advertising this year amid the ongoing teacher shortage.

District Clerk Chris Wendland said his budget is almost the same as the past year, but with a slight increase in money for insurance.

Special Services Director Karla Geda said her department has added some funds for supplies and contracting services this coming year.

Geda also said they want to keep money set aside for Special Olympics trips, which they haven’t been able to do since the pandemic began, but they’re hoping to get that started up again.

Highland Park Early Primary School Principal Mark Irvin, who is starting as Havre High School’s activities director for the next school year, presented the activities budget, but said he’s fairly new to it.

Irvin said based on what he sees, activities are in pretty good shape generally, but he is worried about the effects of inflation, particularly when it comes to transportation costs, which he suspects others are also anxious about.

He said they do have more money for transportation and payroll for this coming year, and he’s not inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth on that front.

“On paper, we look pretty good,” he said.

Irvin also presented the Highland Park budget, which was cut, but only slightly, and they managed to cover it by shifting some money out of a line item they just haven’t been able to use in a while.

Lincoln-McKinley Primary School Principal Holly Bitz said that school’s budget increased for the first time in many years, which is a nice change of pace especially after the drastic cuts that were made in 2016.

Bitz said they were able to put some of the new money back into the places they had to cut it from back then, which she’s very happy about.

Havre Middle School Principal Dustin Kraske, who will become principal at Havre High School in the next school year, said the Havre High budget has been changed a bit from previous years after he went to department heads asking what they needed in the coming year and let them make adjustments based on that.

Kraske said the theater budget has been a bit out of control because they’ve had to replace a lot of lights so the budget still looks pretty high.

But, he said, he recently realized that the theater does have an alternate source of funding that makes it unlikely that they will need to spend all the money they have allocated to it.

He also talked about the middle school budget, which he said was constructed in a similar way to the high school budget and is how they’ve done it for many years.

Kraske said they’ll be able to transfer whatever money they have left into building supplies.

Havre Middle School Assistant Principal Jeremiah Nitz talked about the middle school’s activities budget which he said went up for the first time a while, which is good.

However, Nitz said, one of their biggest expenses at the moment is paying for officials, who are getting more and more expensive, and he is concerned about that.

Sunnyside Intermediate School Principal Pax Haslem said his school’s budget has been going down for some time and that trend continues this year.

Haslem said combined with the cuts, purchasing power is going down and they’ve had to shift things around considerably to cover their supplies this coming year.