The spacious new Adele C. Young Intermediate School is about ready for students, but there's no money to open it, to pay teachers or buy supplies.
Worse, voters already have rejected a proposal to raise the $1 million needed to open the doors."You've got to increase your revenue stream, and that means raising taxes, or you've got to restructure the existing budget, and that means giving up things you've come to cherish," Superintendent Steven Laing said. "But that's the choice we've come down to."
The tough choices started last year when Box Elder County voters rejected a tax proposal that would have raised the money to open the intermediate school.
School board members have taken several steps to raise money, Laing said. They froze hiring in some areas, increased pupil-to-staff ratios at the middle and high schools and asked two principals, Dee Pace and Fred Green, to take over two elementary schools each.
Those efforts and others netted more than half the money needed to open the school, Laing said, but they cut deep into the district's $42 million budget.
School board member Shirlene Peck said the district is hoping to take advantage of class-size reduction money appropriated by the Legislature this year.
"By opening the middle school, every elementary will have their sixth grade moved to the middle school," Peck said. "This will free up . . . many, many classrooms for class-size reduction."
However, Peck said, it is not clear whether the state will allow the money to be used for that purpose.
Until that is determined, Laing said the school board will likely have to choose a tough course at its next few meetings.
"If schools were to be consolidated, we would have to decide to do it within four to six weeks," he said. "We would have to plan to move students and draw boundaries and move staff members . . .
"It isn't a matter of finding the plan that tastes good. It's finding the one that tastes least bad."