School board approves $39 million budget
School board members approved a $39.07 million preliminary budget for the 2018-2019 school year during a special meeting on Monday afternoon.
The budget estimates $36.13 million in revenue and $39.07 million in expenses, and includes a $2.9 million deficit.
In previous years the district designed the budget with a deficit to spend down carryover funds because of a state law that capped the amount of money a school district can carry from one year to the next at 20 percent of the budget, according to Terry Raskiewicz, chief financial officer for the district.
“This year we no longer have to focus on spending down our fund balance,” she said. “We have been doing that for the last three years. The legislature decided last year that they were going to make everybody move the money out and into their building fund if you had more than 20 percent carryover, so we no longer have to focus on spending that money down because that money has been moved out (to the building fund).”
Raskiewicz also said she uses a strategy of “budget for the worst and hope for the best,” creating room in the budget for unexpected costs such as increases in gas and utility prices. In the past, this has resulted in the district ending the year with more money than expected. For example, the district budgeted a $3.6 million deficit in the 2017-2018 school year, but instead ended the year with a surplus of $677,854.
A notable change to this year’s budget is an increase in predicted personal property tax revenue, Raskiewicz said. Last year, the district budgeted for $14.2 million in property tax revenue but actually received $15.5 million. This year, Raskiewicz increased the budgeted amount to $15.6 million.
“Property tax values are on the rise, which is great,” she said. “We saw this in the previous year with the large jump we received in property taxes, so this year when I projected property tax revenues, I projected them more in line with what we received last year.”
The district is not expecting any increases in growth funds from the state this year because the number of students enrolled has remained flat, Raskiewicz said.
Last year, the district moved $2.5 million into the building fund, which was used for projects such as the Northside Elementary School library addition and office renovations and land acquisition, and will be used for projects such as resurfacing the middle school track. Because the money was moved into the construction fund last year, there is no need to move money into the fund this year, Raskiewicz said.
Instead, the district plans on focusing in improving instruction this year. The two largest increases in expenses in the 20182019 budget were for instruction, increased by $1 million, and support, increased by $500,000.
The increases include the cost of step raises to all salary schedules, approved earlier this year, staff training, reading initiatives and providing students with individualized learning through programs such as one-to-one ratio of computer devices in the middle school and high school.
“Because the last few years have been so focused on spending down the fund balance, this year’s focus is on the instruction of students and this is being carried out on many areas in the budget,” Raskiewicz said.