School district sees surplus for second year in row

NEW HAVEN — For the second year in a row, the city school district appears to have ended the fiscal year in the black.

While a pandemic shuttered in-class learning for a good chunk of the 2020-21 school, members of the school board’s finance committee nonetheless celebrated the news.

“Two surpluses in a row, sounds like good fiscal management to me,” said Matt Wilcox, chairman of the finance committee, as Interim Chief Financial Officer Linda Hannans presented unaudited numbers for the fiscal year that ended June 30.

The year ended with an unaudited $91,044 from an operating budget of $189.2 million.

That follows the 2019-20 school year, when the balance was under $1,000, school board members say.

Prior to that, the district was short for three consecutive years. In those instances, it is left to the Board of Alders to find a way to fill the gap.

Usually, that was on top of deep budget cuts from the district.

Mitigation strategies have included school closures and a teachers union salary freeze.

In the 2020-21 fiscal year that just ended, district officials are quick to point out that federal relief grants tied to the pandemic have not directly affected the general operating budget.

Still, it played a role in this year’s surplus.

“We had budget savings last year, some of which were attributable to the fact that students were learning remotely,” said district spokesman Justin Harmon.

As an example, he said, a fall spent in remote learning meant less was spent on supplies and utilities.

Aside from operating funds — which come from the city and the state — the district received about $111 million in grant funding, including about $37.7 million of the federal ESSR, or pandemic relief, funding. About $78.1 million of grant funding was spent by the time the fiscal year ended June 30.

Bottom line, the district ran on $267.32 million in the 2020-21 school year.

Other board members, not at the finance meeting, were less impressed.

“We actually didn’t fully provide educational services to our students during a pandemic while receiving millions of extra dollars from the state and federal governments,” said Board of Education member Darnell Goldson. “I think that should be a given that we should end in the black. My concern is that we are not planning for the future when we will not be receiving those funds.”

For the current fiscal year, it is too soon to tell. The district’s operating budget is $190 million. By November, Hannans expects a clearer forecast of where the district’s 2021-22 numbers will land.