Being a school district trustee in Idaho’s wealthiest county is like being on an ocean liner, says Dan Turner.

But the ship is the Titanic and trying to cut costs feels like rearranging the deck chairs.

“Even standing still we seem to be going backward,” Turner, the Blaine County School Board’s vice chair, told EdNews by phone last week. “It’s how do you bend the cost curve of delivering education?”

On Tuesday, district trustees voted to cut 16.4 staff positions to save $1.7 million for next school year. But that’s not enough to cover the district’s projected funding shortfall. Finance Director Mandy Crow told trustees that after factoring in the staff cuts, the projected deficit for fiscal year 2026-27 is $940,000.

“There were a lot of really hard meetings and hard discussions to get to the point that we’re at, but we are still nearly a million dollars over our revenues,” Crow said. “So that means that next year we’re going to have the same hard conversations and work to put in.”

The district has already cut about 50 positions over the past five years, Board Chair Lara Stone said at Tuesday’s meeting. These new cuts mark the first reduction in force in those five years. The district previously made cuts through attrition, as veteran teachers retired. 

Declining enrollment, lower birth rates and smaller incoming kindergarten classes are the main reasons for the cuts. Enrollment impacts funding for Idaho schools because the state’s funding formula is based largely on average daily attendance. Fewer enrollees means fewer students attending classes. 

The district’s outgoing cohorts are larger than incoming cohorts. Superintendent Jim Foudy said the district graduated 280 seniors last year but has 165 kindergarteners today. State data shows a decrease of about 100 students per year in the district since 2022. Blaine County had 3,113 students last school year.

Teachers in Blaine County are the highest paid in the state, at an average of $92,316, to keep up with the area’s high cost of living. The county of about 25,260 residents has a total assessed property value of $25.8 billion, according to the county assessor’s office. That’s over $1 million in property value for every resident.

The Sun Valley is well known as a popular celebrity retreat. Homeowners include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Hanks and Jamie Lee Curtis, according to Ketchum’s Idaho Mountain Express. Tech titans, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Apple CEO Tim Cook, gather in the valley for an annual summer conference.

Even with all that wealth and strong community support for supplemental levies, trustees struggle to adopt a balanced budget.

“It’s a complex and deeply frustrating issue — particularly for those of us volunteering our time as trustees while trying to stay focused on student achievement and providing the best possible education for our students,” Stone wrote in an email to EdNews last week.

There’s only so much money the district can cut outside of payroll and benefits, which make up about 83% of the budget. Still, Foudy said the little things add up.

The head custodian changed out every soap dispenser in the district to squeeze out $6,000 a year in savings. The district centralized printing in school buildings to save $60,000 a year. Leaders solicited snow removal and landscaping bids to save $100,000.

“Anything and everything we can do,” Foudy said in an interview. “And every department is engaged in finding solutions, however large or small.”

Changing projections

With the lower enrollment trend in mind, trustees in November asked district leadership to cut enough staff to make up the budget shortfall, projected at the time between $1 million and $1.2 million. At a Dec. 9 board meeting, district staff presented a plan to cut 11.4 positions to save $1.2 million.

But at that same meeting, trustees saw new numbers that projected a $2.5 million budget shortfall.

Updated state data from the Idaho System for Educational Excellence showed a reduction in attendance for the district. On top of that, Blaine County’s insurance cost projections grew from a 10% increase to a 17% increase. Trustees asked staff to come back in January with another $500,000 in cuts.

“Our projections were not as accurate as we were hoping,” Turner said.

Foudy gave a few reasons for the lower attendance numbers:

• Fall enrollment was lower than trustees expected.
• Some families moved out of the area between September and November.
• The district fixed a “misunderstanding” on how to count attendance for student athletes.

If a high school athlete travels during the school day, Foudy said they have to be in class for four hours to count as a full day of attendance. But, he said, districts throughout the state were counting athletes in attendance even if they didn’t hit the four-hour mark.

Twin Falls School District also changed how they track attendance for athletes, spokesperson Eva Craner told EdNews. She said Twin Falls received guidance during an Idaho Association of School Business Officials meeting.

“Jim is correct that this could (and likely will) have a negative fiscal impact,” Craner wrote in an email. “I think it is important to note that this has a more profound impact on schools that are rural or in classifications that require significant travel time to reach competitions.”

A spokesperson for the Idaho Department of Education confirmed that students must be under the guidance of a teacher for four hours to count in attendance for the day. In an email to EdNews, public information officer Maggie Reynolds said reporting student athletes for less than a full day’s attendance for sporting events would have “little, if any” impact on attendance metrics.

“We have not determined this to be a source of statewide confusion, and instructional videos from the department’s Public School Finance team as well as the Attendance and Enrollment manual outline this policy,” Reynolds wrote.

Besides staff cuts, the district is considering another way to save. Trustees heard a presentation in December on consolidating several district buildings. The proposal would combine the district office and technology office to cut down on ongoing costs like building maintenance, utilities and support staff like custodians and secretaries, Foudy said. Selling the old buildings would also provide short-term revenue for other projects.

“We like that option because in terms of the district office and tech there’s absolutely no impact on students,” Foudy said.

There was no discussion on building consolidation at Tuesday’s meeting.

State, federal factors

In addition to local issues within Blaine County, like declining enrollment, Stone pointed to outside influences.

“All of these challenges exist before factoring in any potential state budget cuts,” Stone wrote in an email. “The possibility of reductions during the upcoming legislative session is deeply concerning — and, frankly, something that keeps me up at night.”

Just as Blaine County School District is struggling with a budget shortfall, so is the state of Idaho. 

Gov. Brad Little in his State of the State address on Monday proposed keeping “classroom funding” flat next year.

But not everyone is convinced.

At Blaine County’s meeting on Tuesday, Stone said she recently spoke to Sen. Ron Taylor, D-Hailey, about what Taylor expects during this year’s legislative session.

“There’s an expectation that there will be state cutbacks this year that are fairly significant, and he does not expect K-12 public schools to be exempted from those cutbacks,” Stone said. “We don’t know what that looks like. That is in addition to everything that we’ve already talked about here.”

Turner said a 3% holdback, which Little imposed on all state agencies with the exception of K-12 public schools last year, would mean another $750,000 added to the district’s deficit.

Even without new cuts, Stone listed several ways she believes the state shortchanges school districts.

Idaho typically spends the lowest per student in all 50 states and funds schools based on attendance, not enrollment. And the state only covers half-day kindergarten. Still, about half of the state’s general fund budget goes to K-12 annually. This fiscal year, the amount earmarked for schools is over $2.75 billion.

To make up the gap to provide full-day kindergarten, Blaine County included a $1.4 million line-item in its November 2025 supplemental levy. The levy is $7.7 million over two years, which residents approved with 66% of the vote.

“In short, the challenges facing Blaine County School District — and K-12 public school districts across Idaho — stem from long-standing funding shortfalls at both the state and federal levels,” Stone wrote.

Special education is another concern for district leaders.

Foudy said he was “disappointed” when Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield pulled her proposal for a $50 million increase in special education funding.

Every district spends more on special education than what the state provides, he said, and federal law prohibits districts from decreasing funding to support kids with disabilities.

“The concern that I’m hearing widely is that we wouldn’t be in the situation that we’re in if there wasn’t such a large tax relief effort last session,” Foudy said.