Savings begin with district operational sharing

After making difficult cuts to combat a decreasing budget, the Creston Community School District has been working to find creative ways to bring more money into the district.

The CCSD Board nailed down one of these ideas during the Monday board meeting with the approval of an operational sharing agreement with the Lenox Community School District, a move that will save Creston more than $70,000.

CCSD Superintendent Deron Stender has been looking into ways for Creston to utilize the state’s operational sharing program for a while, finally connecting with Lenox earlier this year.

Operational Function Sharing is described by the Iowa Department of Education as an incentive for districts to reduce costs by sharing personnel. Not only do districts save money by splitting the pay of an employee, the state also will provide different amounts of money to each district depending on the position.

Money from the state comes through FTE, or full-time equivalency, which schools use to measure enrollment. For every FTE student, the state provides about $8,000 to the district. Each position in operational sharing carries a different FTE weight. For example, if two districts were to share a superintendent, each district would receive an additional 9 FTEs, or $80,000, from the state.

Other operational sharing positions include HR officer (4 FTEs), transportation director (4 FTEs), curriculum director (2 FTEs) and special education director (2 FTEs). A district is able to obtain 21 FTEs through this program.

After months of meetings with Lenox, the two school districts have agreed to share the positions of Human Resource Officer Taylor Royster and Special Education Director Trish Carson. This will bring both schools six additional FTEs.

“Each district is generating revenue off of this plus we’re reducing our cost for each person by 20%, so it’s a significant savings for our district,” Stender said. “We pick up the six pupils and Lenox picks up the six pupils, they cover 20% of the cost of those two positions, so our total savings is about $73,000.”

Both shared positions will remain in the CCSD, working remotely with Lenox except in special circumstances.

“It’s kind of like the mentor and collaboration program but for special ed and HR,” Stender said. “The goal is to make sure we don’t overburden their existing staff or our existing staff with this process. It’s a resource for both districts to be able to bounce off and collaborate.”