Robbinsdale school district faces $20M budget shortfall due to accounting error
ROBBINSDALE, Minn. — A massive calculating error means the Robbinsdale school district will be tens of millions of dollars in the red next school year.
Robbinsdale Area Public Schools held a meeting Wednesday night for families who wanted their questions answered.
"I'm a single homeowner and the taxes are going up and I need to know where my tax dollars are being spent," said Kim Larson, a concerned taxpayer who attended the meeting.
It's a tough math lesson that the district's superintendent says could result in cuts, but she adds they'll do the best they can to still support students.
Here's a breakdown of the budget: The district reports the total revenues amount to roughly $200 million, made up of $180 million in general revenues and $20 million in compensatory funding. District leaders say during the budget process, that $20 million was somehow counted twice.
"It was an error in the implementation in the staffing and budget process and so we overstaffed what we should have been doing. That was the error," said Ronbinsdale CFO Kim Hoheisel.
Superintendent Teri Staloch said they now have to get creative to address the district's financial needs and the needs of students.
"We're going to some really hard budget decisions for next year … determine what buildings we might look to repurpose, what buildings we might look to renovate and what buildings we may need to close," Staloch said. "While the short- and long-term challenges are real, we can and will create a better school district for our students, staff, families and communities. We have to do some reductions and we get to engage our community to building a better tomorrow for our kids."
In addition to potentially repurposing, renovating and closing some buildings, district leaders say another possibility to make up for the surprise budget shortfall could potentially be a future referendum to support student and district needs.