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RFSD Board unanimously approves 2024-25 supplemental budget 

The Roaring Fork School District Board of Education voted to accept the supplemental budget for the 2024-2025 school year on Wednesday night at the Roaring Fork Schools District Office.  

All board members present voted in favor — board President Kathryn Kuhlenberg was absent for Wednesday’s meeting.

The vote came just hours after a lengthy and successful work session where the board dove deep into every issue the budget was facing and dug to the bottom of the issues to see where it all sprouted from. The approved supplement budget keeps the district’s minimum fund balance as required in the general fund.  



To go along with many other solutions, RFSD Superintendent Anna Cole and Chief Financing Officer Christie Chicoine discussed the necessity of creating a role for a seasonal budget analyst.  

Cole spoke frankly about the issues the budget was facing during the work session on Wednesday afternoon.  



“We are at a point where we need to stop the bleeding,” she said. “Not only for this year, but for the ”25-’26 year as well.” 

The information provided during the work session was crucial to Wednesday’s vote, providing insight into what happened and how those same mistakes won’t be made again. 

“We went through this budget line-by-line,” Director Kenny Teitler said during the meeting. “In doing so, we found out where the holes were when the budget was initially created. We found out what was either an omission, an overage, or an error. That was very helpful for understanding and seeing where the oversight initially came from.” 

A perfect storm of problems came raining down on the RFSD school board when they were trying to make the ’23-’24 and ’24 ’25 budgets. Post-COVID funding plummeted including a $830,000 reduction in Mill Levy funding as well as dwindled enrollment after a projected increase slashed the district’s income. Cole also pointed out how the budget processes over the past few years have been rushed and resulted in the current problems the school district is facing.  

As dictated by state statute and school board policy, the general fund needs to have at least $12.1 million stored away for a rainy-day fund. To fix all the mistakes, both internal and external, the board will have to dip into the general fund but will do everything to stay above the minimum balance. To go along with a staggering $1.7 million omission, the school district had to account for not getting a grant for new buses, as well as receiving less interest earnings than projected. The usage of the fund balance will increase almost $1 million from last year, from $2.6 million to $3.5 million.  

During Wednesday’s meeting, Cole stressed the issues the district faced during initial budget discussions, including the limited amount of time they had set aside to work on the budget.. Cole and Chicoine expressed that limited time wouldn’t affect the upcoming budgets.  

“We want to make sure we’re not going through a rushed budgeting process like we did last year,” Cole said during Wednesday’s work session. “We all know what that resulted in. We want to balance the need, concern, and commitment that we’re hearing from all of you. We want to make sure that our budgets are intentional and understood by the people responsible for making them.” 

Christy Chicoine, RFSD’s first year CFO, has been up to her ears in work since she was hired in July 2024. She has spent countless hours with her sleeves rolled and her tie loosened trying to figure out how to dig upwards, including facing tough questions from the board during the work session.  

Director Jasmin Ramirez didn’t mince words when asking about the missteps previously made, leading to the situation the district finds itself in.  

“This is something I have brought up many times throughout my tenure as a board member,” Director Ramierz started. “One of my biggest concerns when we give out money is that there’s not enough understanding of how budgeting even works. I wonder if moving forward, do we as a board need to create some sort of system to make sure that we hold the CFO to account for the training and professional development of the team as a whole.” 

“Once Christie got here and started to do all this work, we both stepped back and said, ‘this is the wrong goal in terms of what we need out of the next five years,'” Cole continued. “We need to walk out of here with a concrete vision of financial excellence. So, we’ve redesigned the strategic initiative, and we expect to walk out of those five years with everything from the training that Director Ramierz referred to board policies that keep that training in place.” 

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