By GARRETT SAGER
Hays Post
On Monday at the Rockwell Administration Center, the Hays USD 489 Board of Education decided not to approve the Facility Improvement Planner contract due to state budget cuts most likely coming to public education.
According to USD 489 Superintendent John Thissen, $127 million could be cut from the state’s public education budget, which would hit Hays in the the range of $680,000.
“That is for this school year,” Thissen said. “I’m not talking about next.”
This prompted USD 489 to rethink approving the contract of Performance Solutions. The district has already approved the contracts for a architectural firm and a construction manager at risk firm this school year.
Thissen did mention, in speaking with the board lawyer Bill Jeter, that there is a new proposal that would not cut school funding at all this year.
‘That’s just one proposal. All the rest still have cuts,” he said.
Even with the new proposal on the table for the state Legislature, Thissen still felt it was “probable” that there would be cuts handed down for this school year.
“It doesn’t look like it will be as much as we thought, but I still think its probable that there will be cuts before the end of the year,” he said.
Thissen followed that up by saying it would be difficult for him to recommend any more purchases until the budget is decided upon.
Board members unanimously agreed with the Thissen, and the contract approval was put on hold.
“The way the contract is written up, we can table it for three months or six months,” Thissen said. “It can even go into the next school year. It’s not a matter of anything having to start over again.”
Thissen added it was still a goal to have a facility improvement planner.
“It’s what we listed at the beginning as one of our goals for the capital outlay so we can just re-evaluate it at a later time. We just don’t know the cuts that will be handed down yet,” he said.
With the pending budget cuts, most districts, according to Thissen, can pull money out of contingency funds, but that is not the case for Hays.
Thissen said Hays only has $330,000 in its contingency fund.
“For Hays, that’s extremely minimal. It’s just really not much at all,” he said.
Thissen did not recommend using any of the the money from the contingency fund to help pay for the facility improvement planner.
“Its a strange way to budget but, when you only have a couple months of a school year left and cuts, it’s what you have to do,” he said.