School Board Approves Budget

School board members unanimously approved an $86.8M General Fund budget August 20 for the 2019-2020 school year. The general fund maintains the minimum ending fund balance target established by board policy of 8%, but does reflect the need to dip into reserve funding to balance the budget. The impact of the McCleary funding changes, which capped the amount of money districts can collect through their local enrichment “learning” levy, in addition to declining student enrollment, requires utilization of reserve dollars to ensure sufficient revenue to offset programmed expenditures.

This school year’s General Fund budget is based on a projection of 5608 Full-time equivalent (FTE) students, down 52 FTE from last year. Since state school funding is largely based on student enrollment, the district continues to look at ways to address efficiencies to offset the loss of funding.

According to Dr. Smith, “This proposed budget represents the Board’s and community’s continued emphasis and expectation to offer high quality programs and opportunities that lead to the long-term success for all of our students. However, we are going to need to look for additional ways to thoughtfully reduce expenditures over the next few years in order to align costs with long-term revenue projections to ensure long-term fiscal solvency and accountability.”