The St. Charles School District will need to cut $1.5 million from its budget in 2013 and $1.1 million for the 2014 fiscal year, Superintendent Randal Charles said.

Charles told the Board of Education Thursday night that all of the school principals in the district were informed of the situation and that 10 teaching positions have been targeted among the needed cuts. The board discussed arranging teacher/administrator budget workshops to determine where cuts would be made.

"We've just started discussion with our teachers and administrators," Charles said in an interview Friday. "Before we get too far into the budget process we need to sit down with the board and talk about what things they feel they can support and things they wouldn't support on a list to be cut. We'll also talk about long-range plans. This problem won't go away until the economy turns around."

The district reduced expenditures by $7 million in the last three years, which is about 10 percent of its annual $72 million budget. Seventy-three percent of the district's budget comes from local tax revenue.

Charles said the decrease in state revenue to the district is a large part of the reason for cutting the budget. Despite the expenditure cuts in the last three years, the district has avoided layoffs, freezing salaries and kept class sizes from ballooning, he said.

Charles said that while St. Charles doesn't face such steep cuts as other school districts in the area, cutting $2.6 million the next two years is significant.

"The truth of the matter is, all districts in the state are facing the challenge of how to (reduce budgets without reducing staff or services)," Charles said. "This is not new. We've been addressing this for a few years now."

Transportation savings

Rick Radford, assistant superintendent of business, said the school district could save between $700,000 and $800,000 in its first year of operating its own transportation system.

The district began operating its own bus service last August after the school board opted not to renew its contract with First Student. The district established a three-tiered system in which each bus and driver would run three consecutive routes rather than two.

The district also hired Norquise Cooper as transportation director, but she resigned in August after the new system got off to a rocky start. The district has not replaced Cooper and split the duties between other administrators.

Between July and December, the district spent $1.33 million on transportation, an average monthly expenditure of $242,000, Radford said. Officials anticipate $1.2 million in transportation spending for February through June.