CARMEL – The Carmel Board of Education conducted a marathon meeting Tuesday night that didn’t end until 3:01 am. Wednesday — a session that started nine hours earlier.
School trustees were questioned and criticized regarding the county’s largest school district’s deficit of some $6 million — a number reduced in half due to reductions in spending and cuts of program and staff for the 2024-25 school year.
The board presented an updated budget that does not touch two major sticking points for parents – kindergarten and athletics.
Interim Superintendent Joseph McGrath told the audience, “We are listening to the community and saying we want to be responsive to what you’re asking for and that’s exactly what we did.”
The tentative proposal includes $38 million in projected state aid, $104 million in property taxes and $1.1 million in fund balance—numbers that leave the district with $3 million in the hole.
District officials blamed a combination of several factors that have led to the shortfall including under delivered state aid, expiration of COVID relief funds, rising inflation and small tax levy increases over the last decade.
The new proposal would shrink the deficit by making $4.9 million in cuts to staffing and programming, including field trips, STEAM supplies and clubs.
Former Carmel School trustee Tara DeTurris charged the district had been on a “fiscal cliff for years. You knew about this. You can’t fight the community. We have to come together. We can’t eliminate sports. We don’t have $20,000 incentives to give to teachers to retire.”
DeTurris also blamed Carmel’s “revolving door of superintendents” in recent years for the fiscal catastrophe.
The board is now reviewing two options, one that lowers the potential tax increase to 2.34 percent, by using $1.1 million from the fund balance or not touching the fund balance but offsetting that with a higher tax increase of 3.43 percent.
An item on the agenda calling for the approval of a $14.9 million bond resolution authorizing the district to construct safety, security and infrastructure improvements to district buildings and sites was removed from the itinerary by the administration. The board is expected to discuss the bond at its next meeting.
