Lebanon Community School District Budget Committee members on Thursday, May 21, approved a $99.4 million budget for 2026-27 after making some modifications to allow some $2 million in cuts with less impact on athletics.
The actual General Fund, which is essentially the district’s checkbook for day-to-day expenses, is $66,203,232. The $99.4 million figure represents all of the district’s proposed spending for the upcoming fiscal year, including money saved for capital projects, debt service, savings and various other funds.
In their initial meeting on May 14, some committee members were visibly concerned about the cutting of the football program at Seven Oak Middle School and other cuts, particularly the removal of one dance coach position, questioning whether the proposed reductions were “equitable.”
Supt. Jennifer Merkley and Steven Prososki, director of finance for the district, went back to the drawing board to find ways to reduce the impact on athletics.
The committee is composed of all five School Board members – Melissa Baurer, Loralee Engler, Mike Martin, Nichole Piland and Clyde Rood, and appointees William Barish, Jeff King, Roger Maurer, Anthony Morelos and Kelly Tucci. Rood participated remotely in the May 21 meeting.
Merkley noted that the previous meeting had ended “abruptly” due to time constraints, and said she had considered the feedback she’d gotten.
She proposed that the district reduce nine assistant coaches rather than the original 10, and that athletic fees for students not be raised.
Committee members at the May 14 meeting had raised concerns about “equity” between the cheer program coaching staff and dance after an initial proposal to cut one coaching position from dance.
Middle school football remains on the list of reductions.
Keeping the fees at the current level would cost $25,000, Meckley said, with an additional $5,000 to fund the dance coach position, totaling $30,000.
Meckley further explained that the district budgets for an athletic trainer, which in recent years has been provided via contract by Beaver Sports Medicine, but that the district has decided to switch to a full-time staff position that will be advertised this summer.
She said $50,000 has been budgeted for the position for 2026-27, and, as a licensed position in the district’s collective bargaining agreement, it is required to be posted, which would actually total $70,000.
Meckley noted that, as the trainer position can be difficult to fill, “if we don’t get a qualified applicant, then we go to a contracted service.”
A potential wrinkle, she said, is that Beaver Sports Medicine may not offer the service after next year, so that hurdle may need to be addressed.
The total cost to include those two items in the athletics budget would be $100,000, which would “need to come from somewhere else,” she said.
That would require reducing one staff position at the high school, “because that’s where enrollment makes the most sense” due to student enrollment, she said.
She said some of that amount could be reduced through attrition, due to $50,000 that will be saved when a staff member, whom she did not identify, goes from full- to part-time.
“By reducing another classified staff, we may be able to get this all balanced and make up this total of $100,000,” she added.
Those would be in addition to the “original cuts,” she said.
Also, the district usually budgets about $120,000 when seeking a full-time certified staff member “if we don’t know where they are on the salary schedule,” she said, acknowledging that the position is currently only budgeted for $50,000, “so we would need another $70,000.”
If the position is not filled by posting it, the amount would revert to $50,000, she said in response to a question from Piland.
“We won’t know that until, potentially, the end of summer,” she said. “So, we have to plan for it.”
Melissa Baurer asked whether the district has ever reached out to Samaritan Health about the possibility of contracting with them for a trainer.
Rood recalled that when Western University opened in Lebanon, the district used interns from the school for athletic training, asking whether that was still possible.
Both he and Meckley said they were not entirely clear on the details of that arrangement.
In response to another question from the committee, Prososki said he forecasts the future based on low-, middle- and “high-case” scenarios of enrollment declines.
Low case would be stable enrollment or a “relatively modest” decline, he said, “that could be addressed through normal attrition, operational efficiencies” and ongoing adjustments to budget line items. That impact could range from “zero to up to $500,000 reduction in a future budget.”
In a middle-case scenario, enrollment declines by another 100 students and “costs continue to rise at expected levels,” which could result in more staff reductions and “operational adjustments similar to what districts across the state are experiencing,” resulting in cuts of anywhere from $1 million to $3 million down the road.
In a high-case scenario, enrollment declines would exceed the district’s projections, with “significant” spending costs due to inflation, contractual obligations or reduced state funding. That could result in much larger deficits that could force “more significant corrective action,” forcing cuts of $3 million to $5 million in a future budget, he said.
“If I were to guess, I think we are in the low- to mid- scenario,” he said, adding that enrollment numbers on Oct. 1 are a good indicator of where things are going.
He noted that a $378,000 anticipated state grant for summer school has been removed from the budget, after the district was denied it.
Both Prososki and Meckley, clearly irritated, said they don’t know why the district didn’t get the grant.
“We applied using the same program we ran last year,” Meckley said, explaining that the way the state scored applications changed. “But we had no feedback to say last year wasn’t good. Some districts get a million, a hundred thousand.
“I have some feelings about it.”
Barish, who is a local doctor, asked whether the district is “looking 10 years down the road,” listing various challenges the district faces: climbing expenses, declining student numbers, and student shifts to charter and online schools.
“It seems like we’re basically going to eat ourselves down to nothing,” he said. “I think we need to be thinking about, maybe, a total reorganization of how we approach public education.
“Obviously, that’s not just our district; that’s probably through the whole state or through the whole country. But it seems that if we just deal with this year by year, or biennium by biennium, we’re just going to continue to just slowly nibble away at ourselves – like a rat, it’s just gonna eat itself in defeat.”
“I could not agree more,” Meckley replied after a wave of laughter from the meeting attendees. “That’s so accurate of what it feels like in public education.”
She said that she’s involved in “constant advocacy” with her fellow superintendents, but there are many needs.
“It’s like, of all of these 10 things we need, what are we going to focus on?” she said. “There’s so many, even in our realm.”