The administration of President Donald Trump has tasked Education Secretary Linda McMahon with closing the Department of Education, and several cuts already have been made to staffing and programs.

Uncertainty about the department’s continued existence leaves local school districts wondering what will become of the funding that supports many of their teachers, students and programs.

Officials in Boardman and Austintown, two of Mahoning County’s largest districts, have different perspectives about how the expected cuts will affect them.

Both districts receive funding from DOE for generally the same purposes. Title 1, Title 2a, Title 4a, and IDEA mainly provide funding for special education and elementary school programs.

Boardman Local School District Superintendent Chris Neifer said the district’s funding varies from year to year, but Boardman usually receives between $3 million and $4 million.

“Building those foundations, that’s where it’s so critical that they get the right start, for those kids who are struggling, and this allows us to have that specialization and meet the kids where they are,” Neifer said. “Maybe it’s about help with math or language arts or social and emotional needs, but it’s about having the staffing to meet those individual students’ needs.”

Neifer said he worries what will happen to those students.

“All of that would be unaffordable and it would have a huge impact on our students, especially those on IEP’s (individual education programs) and with special education needs,” he said.

Austintown Local School District Treasurer Blaise Karlovic said Austintown receives about $2.8 million from the federal department– $2.3 million of which is IDEA funding for students with disabilities.

Both Karlovic and Neifer said they have heard the title programs and IDEA, which precede the establishment of the DOE, may continue to provide much of that funding, though it may be administered and dispersed differently. Both said they expect some reductions.

“That the funding itself will be maintained if we go back to the model from the 1970s, so that would mean more flexibility with spending it without all the federal oversight,” Neifer said.

He said that’s the best the district can hope for right now.

“I know sometimes hope is not a great strategy, but sometimes it’s all we have to work with. There’s nowhere else to get that money and that’s 5 to 10% of our budget. That being a very large drop in the bucket, I’m not sure how we would recover from that,” he said.

Neifer said substantial cuts in title program funding would almost certainly mean a cut in staffing. “We’d do the best we could to meet the needs for those kids, but there would be no easy answer to that,” he said.

Optimism is hard to come by right now, Neifer said, with federal and state cuts looming.

Combining the DOE cuts with the new proposed public school funding formula in Gov. Mike DeWine’s biennial budget “would be a huge problem for us to overcome,” he said. “By our estimates, unless something changes, over the next few years we stand to lose about $2.5 million.”

With the new formula weighing enrollment more heavily, public schools stand to lose millions across the board.

“In the last 10 years in Northeast Ohio, we have seen about a 3% decrease in enrollment in public schools,” Neifer said. “It’s a big part of what we do, and any cut in financing has a big impact on our students. We would have to pull from elsewhere, and a lot of money has strings attached.”

Neifer said he expects that, in addition to special education staff, the district would see cuts to sports and extracurriculars, transportation and some academic offerings.

“We’d sit down and prioritize and figure out what would have the least amount of impact on students, but we would have to tighten our belts,” he said. “It just depends on what that money is earmarked for, and where we have the ability to move it from one place to another.”

AUSTINTOWN MORE OPTIMISTIC

Karlovic said he takes a more optimistic view because he believes his district is more proactive than most in running a tight fiscal ship.

The state of Ohio agrees. Karlovic — and, by extension, the Austintown schools — just received the Ohio Auditor of State’s Award with Distinction for excellence in financial reporting after Auditor Keith Faber’s staff spent five months combing through the district’s finances.

Superintendent Tim Kelty said he also feels confident about how the district manages its money.

“We’re pretty happy with where we’re at, we’re very efficient with our funds,” Kelty said. “We don’t ask for much (from state or federal departments) and don’t go to voters for much. We haven’t had to ask for an operating levy since 1996.”

Karlovic said he doesn’t see the DOE’s potential closure or potential corresponding funding cuts as cause for major alarm for Austintown.

“We can’t look at it as a doom and gloom scenario. This is just part of the process,” he said. Karlovic expects a change in how the money comes to the district, but not a loss of funding.

“I do not believe it will be a complete loss of $2.8 million or a complete dissolution of those programs,” he said.

However, Karlovic said he is concerned about losing funds federally and through the proposed new state funding formula.

“The governor’s initial budget proposal, obviously, it’s different from what we had initially forecast,” he said. “But there was concern two years ago, as well, and as it went through the process, it started to right-size itself. I do believe we’ll have a budget as of July 1.”

What that budget will be remains the question.

“Is there some cause for concern? A little bit,” Karlovic said.

The district would take an estimated $1.4 million hit under the current proposal.

“But we like to make proactive decisions so that we’re never caught in a situation where we have to make radical changes to the district, so we always plan accordingly,” he said.

Karlovic said increasing enrollment, which Austintown continues to enjoy — although not at a rate that would compensate for the losses based on the proposed funding formula — comes with its own costs.

“As you get bigger in enrollment, you have to increase your costs to sustain that,” he said. “We look at it as ‘if that’s the budget, what can we do to adjust?’ So we think in terms of retirements, consolidating class scheduling, getting lean through attrition, instead of making radical cuts when an emergency comes. We’ve stayed lean over the past six years, so we have the ability to plan for that rainy day.”

He said the district recently audited all its vendors and contracts and uncovered additional opportunities for savings and efficiencies.

Karlovic said he expects the legislative process to work in the district’s favor again.

“I don’t believe we’ll have a $1.4 million funding loss, no, but there’s potential for some loss,” he said.

In the long term, he believes school funding in the state will even out, even as charter schools and voucher programs see disproportionate funding increases.

“They’re getting 6 to 7% funding increases, and public schools are getting about a 0.1% increase, and that’s going to level itself out. There’s going to be a meeting in the middle somewhere,” Karlovic said.

For now, Karlovic and Kelty said there have been no conversations between them or their school boards about programming or staffing cuts.

“We’re confident in our funding levels to move forward and plan long term,” Kelty said. “We’re always prepared for the unpredictable funding swings that happen and we’re very conscientious and conscious of what we’re doing because we don’t want at any point to have to go to the voters for any money.”