In Pullman, school aid dollars will help students fill gaps

The Pullman School Board on Wednesday discussed a $40.3 million budget for the coming school year, including about $5.2 million in federal aid to help districts rebound from the pandemic.

Finance Director Diane Hodge said the budget is nearly $2 million more than that for the previous year.

Hodge said the lion’s share of aid dollars are slated to be spent on student learning loss — learning deficiencies encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic — noting a learning recovery teacher has been hired for each school in the district to help students rebound.

Also in her presentation to the board, Hodge said the district lost about 192 full-time equivalent students as a direct result of the pandemic, which caused revenues to drop somewhat, but the district expects at least some of these students to return.

“Our goal (for the 2020-2021 school year) is to actually get half of that enrollment back,” Hodge said. “I think it’s doable — it’d be nice if we got more — but we’re anticipating at least 50 percent of the decline to return back.”

As per district policy, she said about 7 percent of the budget will be held in reserve — about the equivalent to the cost of one month’s payroll. She said she would prefer to hold even more back as part of a reserve fund balance, noting strong reserves were instrumental in helping the district weather the pandemic.

“That healthy fund balance actually got us unscathed through COVID,” she said. “A lot of people were furloughing (and) laying people off — we didn’t lay one person off, we didn’t furlough anybody ... which is why I think it’s important to hold a phone balance of about 10 or 11 percent, so we do have that emergency fund.”

The Pullman School Board will consider action on the budget in its Aug. 11 meeting, which will also include a public hearing where members of the community can offer comments.

Jackson can be reached at (208) 883-4636, or by email to sjackson@dnews.com.