The More Things Change . . .
In October of 2010, the fall after I accepted my first superintendent position, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed Act 10 into law. The residual effect of that led to the need for our district to cut $2.2M out of a $37M budget. In my second superintendent position, my CFO told me in May when I was visiting the district shortly after I was appointed, that we had a $2.4M budget deficit going into the next school year, but not to worry, because in June, the Board planned to cut $1M, and we had enough fund balance to manage until we could take further budget measures. For whatever reason, that didn't happen, and a week later, when the calendar turned to July, I walked through the door and into a situation where we had a $3.4M deficit on a $120M budget. In the first instance we balance the budget by the next budget cycle. In the second instance, it took two budget cycles. In either case, it is not exactly the way a new superintendent would prefer to come into a ne...