School Director Piret Rips submitted a request to the ministry in which she said the main reason for the funding shortfall was an announced budget cut of approximately 11 percent, which the school considers disproportionately large.

In addition, an increase in teachers' minimum salaries at the end of last year created additional financial obligations for the school that had to be covered from its operating budget as the ministry did not allocate additional funding for the increase.

"The increased salary obligation had to be covered from exactly the same budget, which was already below the school's actual needs. In practice, it was covered from the operating funds allocated to the school, meaning it has now been increasingly underfunded for the second year in a row," Rips said.

According to Rips, the budget shortfall has also been exacerbated by the addition of 16 students this fall at an additional cost of €34,661, service contracts and additional compensation necessary to carry out instruction costing €58,500 and investments that have gone unmade over the years.

The school urgently needs funding to meet occupational health requirements (€75,000), maintain its IT and operational infrastructure (€185,200 in total) and renew its inventory of musical instruments (€57,000) to ensure students are provided with learning materials free of charge.

"The cuts have also prevented the school from maintaining the instruments it owns and purchasing new ones. The ministry has pointed out to the school that the materials and equipment needed for activities required by the curriculum — which in MUBA's case also means instruments — must be provided to students free of charge, but the school has not been allocated the funding needed to meet this obligation," Rips said.

Student home made paid to save money

Rips said that since the spring, under its new management, MUBA has implemented several cost-saving measures that are expected to generate approximately €162,333 in savings and additional revenue this year and nearly €387,620 next year.

Among other measures, eight administrative employees have been laid off, teaching-load requirements for instrument teachers have been increased, some elective courses have been eliminated and the student dormitory has been made fee-based. Charging for the student dormitory will bring the school €42,240 this year and €95,040 next year, the first full year of the measure.

As a result of the layoffs, administrative payroll costs as a share of the teaching staff payroll have fallen from 28 percent to 23 percent.

"At this point, all options for cutting costs during the current academic year without adversely affecting the existing curricula or the quality of instruction have been exhausted," Rips said.

Larger structural changes, such as increasing the share of group lessons and reducing the amount of individual instruction for lower-performing students, cannot take effect until the next academic year and will also require ministry approval in some cases.

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