St. Cloud School Board Reviews 2026-2027 Preliminary Budget

(KNSI) – The St. Cloud School District 742 school board has reviewed its preliminary budget for the 2026-2027 school year.

At Wednesday night’s meeting, the board approved an increase to next year’s levy to fund various facilities and improvements at Apollo High School, including the newly approved Apex Athletics Center. These improvements are the result of a $65 million voter-approved referendum that passed last April.

Amy Skaalerud, the district’s executive director of finance and business services, said teachers’ salaries make up the largest portion of the budget. The district has seen a larger staffing increase for both teachers and special education paraprofessionals, which Skaalerud said comes from an increase in compensatory revenue.

One major funding issue the district faces is transportation, since a large portion of its budget comes from special education. For the 2026-2027 fiscal year, special education programs are expected to be underbudgeted by $13.3 million.

Skaalerud noted that at the most recent legislative session, the Minnesota Legislature approved a phased proration of special education transportation. From this proration, she said reimbursement revenues have dropped and are anticipated to decline further by the next school year.

“It used to reimburse 100% of those costs,” said Skaalerud. “For the 2025-2026 school year, that decreased to 95%. Next year, that goes down to 90%, so we’re generating less revenue to cover those special education transportation costs.”

Skaalerud added that the board is considering using increases in general fund revenue to offset these decreases and remains hopeful of finding more funding from the legislature. “We didn’t lose funding other than transportation, which we already knew was coming. We’ve always figured that if we can hold level funding, even if it’s not a best-case scenario, it’s certainly better than having to make cuts.”

Despite the funding drop, Skaalerud said she doesn’t anticipate it causing any significant changes next school year. “Families may see class sizes going down in some areas. We have money intentionally set aside for literacy intervention. Because of that, we may see families whose students are behind grade level be able to get additional support that hasn’t been available to them in the past.”

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