YCUSD keeps up ser vices without ‘overdrafting’

The Yuba City Unified School District’s next budget will use $15.5 million in leftover revenue from the last fiscal year to cover a roughly $5.5 million gap between projected cash flows and expenditures.

According to the proposed 2017-18 fiscal year budget, the district’s total revenue is expected to be about $141 million compared to about $142 million the year before. General fund expenses are proposed to be about $146.5 million compared to the previous year’s estimated $145.4 million. The district will begin the fiscal year with $15.5 million in undesignated revenue.

The board of trustees will vote to approve the budget during their July 27 meeting at the YCUSD Office.

Deputy Superintendent Robert Shemwell summarized the budget:

“We’re a positive budgeted school district. Most years we close our books without having that deficit expenditure in place.” Following are highlights:

Decreased enrollment has resulted in less funding for the district, Shemwell said. But, YCUSD will have about $10 million going forward into the 2018-19 fiscal year and has more than $7 million in reserve, he said.

“We’ve seen declining enrollment over the last three years and with declining enrollment goes money,” Shemwell said.

State funding through the Local Control Funding Formula amounted to about $115 million this year.

Instructional costs constitute about 83 percent of budget expenses, with $118 million from the 2017-18 budget, compared with $117.2 million last year. Instructional costs are the salaries and wages of teachers, classroom aids and other functions directly related to instruction.

Laura Estey, the YCUSD director of accounting, said the district is not operating on a deficit.

“We’re not going negative in basically overdrafting our bank account so to speak,” Estey said. “We want to keep the programs and services for our students moving forward."