Cost cutting committee offers budget solutions

Nick McLain
Nov 11, 2009 (Zionsville Times Sentinel - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --

A Cost Cutting Advisory Task Force has come up with 45 ideas to cut the Zionsville Community Schools 2010 budget, which was presented during the Monday night, Nov. 9, ZCS board meeting.

At a recent meeting, Superintendent Scott Robison, announced that due to a lack of funds the school system would receive for the next year, it needed to come up with additional ways to cut the budget.

Robison presented potential areas the committee, which has 15 members from the community, has come up with for cost cutting. Those include early retirement incentives, asking the teachers union (Zionsville Educators Association) to accept a moratorium on incremental raises, eliminating or charging for employee use of personal appliances, including refrigerators, fans, heaters, lights, etc., change lighting to reduce electrical consumption and reduce or eliminate all color printing in the schools.

"This is some of the low hanging fruit they've identified that will save us some number of thousands of dollars," Robison said.

In addition, the committee is considering charging for use of ZCS facilities for the Jersey Surf band event and the Miss Indiana pageant. Jersey Surf stayed five nights earlier this year in the high school.

"Creating a hotel situation in our freshman center is probably not optimum," Robison said.

He estimated that the Jersey Surf use of the facilities costs between $4,000 and $7,000.

The Miss Indiana pageant, similarly, uses the facilities for a week but is not charged to do so.

Another measure that will be considered is charging (or eliminating) transportation to the after-school programs at United Methodist Church and the Boys and Girls Club.

Robison said the task force recently met and heard from an insurance consultant and an outsourcing expert that specializes in IT.

He said a time and place will be set soon for a late November or early December meeting where the public will be invited to attend and offer feedback to some of the ideas that the committee has put together.

"All of these will have some pushback from the community," Robison said. "I bring them up here in a public meeting because in future months, you will probably see them as recommendations for your approval, even though they are controversial."

Also at the meeting:

--The board unanimously approved two new courses to be added to the high school curriculum in the 2010-11 school year -- Mandarin III and Advanced Science-Robotics. Currently, the Robotics Club has 88 student members, and the demand had come for it to become a class, Robison said. The start-up cost is $23,000 for the robotics class, but they hope to raise that in donations from parents and from fees for the students who register for the class.

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