School Board holds final session of fiscal year

When the board was preparing to make final adjustments to the budget at it’s June 23 meeting, Supt. Mark Koca told the board, “We usually make a motion to transfer the maximum amount from Fund 1 to Fund 4 for capital projects. The reason we don’t go ahead and specify an amount is we wait for the audit. If we move too much DESE get a  little unhappy with you. This year it’s probably going to be a maximum of $520,000.” The board made and approved that motion.

Board members present for the June 23 final board meeting were Chad Whitesell, Allen Hoover, Josh Floyd, Greg Beydler and Darrell Eason – presiding. Absent were Benny Brower, who the superintendent said had pneumonia, and Scott Cluck.

In executive session the board hired Holly Gemes – High School social studies, Scott Steward – Middle School social studies and Jordan Peace – High School Science.

To save auditing expense, the board amended the budget to actual figures.

Looking at the budget summary, Supt. Mark Koca told the board, “You will see the revenue exceeded expenses by just a little bit. It was nice to see that happen. That leave us at about 98% for the year on all expenses.”

“Probably the most important thing to look at here is the last figure at the bottom. After all the stuff is in there, it shows we’ve got $400,000 more than we started with last year. There may be some changes as we clean up the books, but I’m feeling really good about that number. That made a huge difference when I brought it forward to the new budget. It really made for a lot of leeway there for us. I put quite a bit of it into some increased budgets and some building supplies because we have not increased any of the building budgets since I have been on board (five years). So I added a few thousand to each of those and some money for technology and just kind of spread it around a little bit.”

“We’ll look at the budget here in a little bit. It looks like we are going to be in good shape.”

He said, “I feel pretty good about the numbers. It leaves us in a really good place for next year.”

The board moved on to the budget for next year.

The superintendent said, “It’s probably good to know that our reserves are going to set at about $4 million at the end of this year. That’s a little better than last year.”

He said the unrestricted fund balance may be nearly 30%.

Koca told the board, “Enrollment is down. That is felt in the budget a little bit this year. It will be worse next year probably, not because of continued decrease in enrollment. It’s just the three year average deal in the formula.”

“Incidentally,  the reason the budget message is required, if we do pass a bond issue, it will be requested by everybody who wants to purchase those bonds. They will want to see this information to get an idea of the financial health of the district.”

He based local calculations on an assessed valuation of just over $90 million which is about a two percent increase over last year. “Historically, we have generally been at a 3 or 3 1⁄2% year to year, so again, conservative numbers on the revenue side.”

He said that money from local sources amount to about 40% of our budget.

State revenue, which is our bread and butter, amounts to about 40% of our budget, just over $5 million projected. That’s probably the most we have ever received, all in.

“Federal money, about 17%. That’s up a little bit this year. Our Title I allocation was a lot larger than we expected.”

He said, “So as of July 1, 2016, it looks like we’re looking at a beginning balance of $4.4 million, projected revenues of $12.4 million and expenditures of $12.378 million.”

He gave the major impacts on the budget:

• Employee insurance a 12% decrease – well over $100,000 saved because of that.

• The Early Childhood Development Center and the practice field will consume quite a bit of our capital project money for the coming year.

• We will have to add staff mid-year for the opening of that Early Childhood Center. However, that is a revenue generating structure over there, so we will also have some revenue coming in off that, as well. I think I put $75,000 in there for revenue. Just a complete shot in the dark. I have not clue what that’s going to generate. We don’t know how many kids were are going to have, but at least there is some money in there and we can adjust those as needed later.”

The revenue will come from payments from Day Care clients.

“Our Career Ladder numbers continue to grow as people move up to Step 2 and Step 3. We see more utilization of those funds.”

“We’ve got a number of our staff moving up on the salary schedule because of taking graduate classes. That’s a mixed blessing. The graduate classes make them better teachers but they also cost us more. We certainly encourage them to do that.”

“We had 16 staff members leave us again this year which seems to be about the average number for us. That happened to (mostly) be in the High School.”

Figures show a surplus in the budget of $103,000 leaving us about $4.54 million at the end of next year.

“I’m just really pleased to offer a budget that’s in the black. I think it’s the first time I’ve done it since I’ve been here (five years)” Supt. Koca said.

The board approved the 2016-17 budget with a 5-0 vote.