“The Bainbridge Island School District will likely use a baseline model to determine its 2001-02 budget.First, everything would be cut away except bottom-line program elements and staffing required for the school system to function. Then items deemed both desirable and financially feasible would be returned. What we’re struggling with is a way to make allocation of scarce resources to many valued entities, Bainbridge School Board chair Bruce Weiland said.The question is: What strategy do you use to bring people together to make good decisions with fewer resources? The new budget model is based in part on the recommendations of two consultants. According to the administration officials, baseline levels will be conservative. They will include an adequate but minimal number of regular classroom teachers based on lower enrollment projections. The board’s budget committee will determine the baseline number of all other district employees.Decisions will be made across the spectrum of district programs, but draconic decisions – cutting foreign languages from the high school, for example – are not in the works, according to school board member Ken Brieland. In addition, special education and transportation will be exempt from cuts.The baseline approach to budgeting is the result of the district’s current financial problems. The district has been strapped this year – beginning the school year with a shortfall of about $1 million – because of overestimations of enrollment, higher costs for utilities, operating costs for Woodward Middle School and litigation – what Brieland characterized as cumulative bad stuff. The district has an annual operating budget of about $25 million.In a move district officials admit is somewhat unusual, the board recently approved transferring interest from the capital projects budget to the general education fund.Even after the transfer, the unreserved fund balance was less than 2 percent of the general fund. That amount is barely sufficient, according to the draft of the proposed district budget, to cover normal expenditures – let alone the unexpected.Toward 2002The first step in the upcoming budgeting process is for program heads to submit preliminary budgets to the board budget committee for review. Next, determination of the starting point – the baseline – will come from school superintendent Stephen Rowley and the budget committee in early February. The District Budget Advisory Committee (DBAC), consisting of administrators, staff, parents and community members, will not be involved in establishing the baseline. One reason for separating the DBAC from this part of the process, Brieland said, is to avoid having groups of employees put in the position of having to decide about each others’ jobs. We would rather have them adding back in. Once the baseline is established, the DBAC will meet to review the current year’s budget, enrollment projections, the baseline budget and the outlook for 2001-02 revenues and expenditures. Then in March, the committee will hold four forums for school personnel and the public.Topics of discussion will include both the budget process and how to spend projected new state revenues from Initiative 728, passed by Washington voters in November. According to school officials, the committee will then provide recommendations to the board about what they would like to see added back to the baseline. The final budget recommendations, however, will come from Rowley to the board, which is responsible for final approval by mid-July – six weeks earlier than the Aug. 31 deadline of the most recent budget process. Establishing a baseline budget in the district may have the spin-off benefit of clarifying educational priorities.As decisions are made about what is essential and what can go, the cut-back or continuation of a particular program may establish its relative value. Completing the process early gives the district flexibility in coping with staffing changes required by projected lower enrollment, according to Mike Schroeder, district business director.Weiland cautioned that the baseline budget press is potentially divisive, but characterized the model as sensible fiscal policy. The baseline budget model is a good one, Weiland said. It has staff participation and public participation.There will be a school board study session on the budget process, 5:30-7 p.m. Dec. 14 in the BHS library. “