Littleton Public Schools had a budget deficit of $10.6 million this past academic year, and as a result they have been cutting back on spending. For teachers, this has meant a freeze in wage increases and an unpaid furlough day. The mill levy override, or measure 4A on the ballot, is an attempt to fix this issue by raising property taxes for residents of Littleton in order to counteract this deficit.
Mrs. Melissa Boyle, a teacher at Heritage, says that teachers have been feeling the lack of funding. “Usually we get at least a cost of living increase which is about 3%, two to 3%. When the cost of living increases each year, just a little bit, our salaries would increase that much as well, that two or 3%… But the minimum cost of living increase… that has been frozen so we haven’t gotten an increase of any kind.”
Boyle also says that healthcare premiums have risen. “This year it’s going to cost more money to insure our families for medical insurance. Our paychecks are actually lower this year because there’s no increase and then the insurance premiums are higher.”
This severe budget deficit was caused by decreased enrollments which, as Superintendent Dr. Todd Lambert explained in an interview with CBS, are directly tied to lower funding. “You have per-pupil money… [which] comes out to just around $12,000 per student. So, as we lose students, that goes down.”
The mill levy is, according to Boyle, a relatively painless way to fix the budget deficit for the foreseeable future. “There would be a small increase in taxes for LPS families… If you lived in a home that was, let’s say, worth around $600,000, which seems like an extraordinary amount of money, but that’s a typical average price here in Littleton, you’d be paying an average increase in taxes of about $13 a month.”