Mt. Healthy City Schools has a new superintendent. Last Friday, former Assistant Superintendent Sarah Wilson officially took over the top job after former Superintendent Valerie Hawkins retired.
It's been a rough stretch for Mt. Healthy Schools. Early last year, Ohio's auditor placed the school district in a fiscal emergency after the district's newly hired treasurer discovered financial forecasting errors made by the former treasurer. As a result, the school district found itself with a projected budget deficit of $10.7 million, which then forced the school's administration to take a nearly $11 million loan from the state to pay employees and keep its school buildings open.
Since then, Mt. Healthy has laid off more than 100 full-time employees, dramatically reduced student transportation, added participation fees for athletics, and overall has trimmed resources for educators, staff, and students.
Class sizes have grown significantly, which has frustrated parents and left teachers feeling overwhelmed.
Wilson says she's ready to lead the school district past the hardships of the previous year to begin the process of recovering and rebuilding the schools.
"We need to come together as a community, as a district, with staff, students, families, and really collaborate to do what's best for our kids," she told WVXU on her first day as superintendent.
How Mt. Healthy got here
For Wilson, that starts with finalizing the district's financial recovery plan with the state, but so far, that hasn't been easy.
District administrators have been working to finalize a recovery plan for months with mixed results. School leaders were able to get on a new repayment plan for their $11 million state loan. Previously, Mt. Healthy needed to repay the loan in just two years, which would have pulled more than $5 million from its budget each year. However, in May, the state approved the school district's request to extend the repayment over eight years.
The new repayment plan, along with cuts, helped the district achieve a positive cash balance at the end of the last fiscal year. Although the district still had a projected budget deficit a few years down the line, the school leaders pointed to the cash balance as a sign that the school system was recovering.
Ohio's new state budget bill quickly dampened that excitement. Mt. Healthy will head into the school year with about $1 million less in state funding, putting the district back into deficit spending for the current fiscal year.
That likely means more cuts soon. Wilson hopes the passage of a levy in this year's November election will lessen the impact of the funding loss. But passing a levy won't be easy. Several past attempts have failed in Mt. Healthy. To prevent that from happening again, Wilson says the district needs to earn back the public's trust and involve the community in decision-making.
"I'm hoping to reignite some passion and excitement around our strategic plan and our goals, which ultimately have not changed," she said.
Wilson says the administrative team will spend the next month making the necessary adjustments to get Mt. Healthy's financial recovery plan approved by the state, so it can be moved out of a state of fiscal emergency, repay its loan, and start looking at services and programs it could eventually consider bringing back.
Mt. Healthy is one of only two school districts in Ohio currently in a fiscal emergency. The other is Trimble Local Schools in Athens County, which received the designation in April of this year.
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