You can tell it's summer time by how few people attended our board meeting. I think besides staff there were only three others that attended the whole meeting. I hope more than that take the time to read my blog.
It was a very short meeting, but I have some follow-up information from our last meeting that I will include also. One of the first things we did was approve the resignation of Joe Rodriguez, the IT guy. He is going to Grangeville. He will be hard to replace. We also approved the FCCLA to go on their national competition to Orlando.
Julie Cederberg, the district secretary, presented the district budget for approval for next school year. She had a paper prepared with the budget outline. I won't get into all the details that I detailed in my last blog. If you haven't read it, please do, I spent a lot of time coming up with information and explaining every budget detail so all can better understand. Please encourage everyone who has an interest in our school funds to read it. The main thing that I haven't stated before is where it looks like we will end up and what is being budgeted for next year. Julie is estimating we will spend $100,000 of our last year's contingency budget. Last year we planned for a budget deficit of $232,000, so we will do much better than we planned. A couple reasons it is better is how well our budget has been managed by our Administrators and we had been told there might be another hold back of funds last year that didn't happen. It's always good to plan for the worst and have things turn out better. We will have more exact budget details of our last year's budget after our audit in August.
The budget for next year is very close to the same. We approved spending another $100,000 out of our contingency fund for next year, leaving at the end of next year about $600,000 in the contingency. One cost increase is a 3% increase in insurance, which I think is smaller than expected. The main reason we are able to cover the increased insurance cost is because a teacher left from the elementary and we chose not to replace her. As I explained in my last blog the state has plans to restore more funds back to the Maintenance and Operation's fund, if the economy improves enough. But I think we will all believe it when we see it. One fact you might find interesting. Our budget has dropped $746,000 since the 2009-2010 school year. It's amazing we still have a contingency fund balance.
I then reported on the last committee meeting. Basically we had talk about the district budget and I referred everyone to read my blog to get a detailed explanation. We will not have a committee meeting this month.
I emailed Mr. Tubbs some follow-up questions from our last board meeting a couple days before the board meeting, that I thought needed discussed, he then replied in an email back to the board the answers. None of this was on the agenda for discussion. I asked more questions at the meeting to again follow-up from the answers he provided.
I had asked if they had a chance to look at the drug use, cell phone, and dress policies. He said the management team has met twice to look at all three policies, but hasn't had time to get a committee together to review them. They plan on having recommendations back to us by fall. If anyone has ideas of how these should be changed let Mr. Tubbs know, he is very open to suggestions. I told him last night, whatever they come up with needs to be better enforced and uniformly enforced.
I asked if we are getting lined up for the Common Core Standards. He said yes that several staff members have had training concerning the common core. They are looking at the curriculum to see what we need to do when purchasing new curriculum for next year to cover any gaps.
I asked about Pay for Performance in the email and at board meeting. The administration is working with the teachers to figure out if our plan needs changed from the state plan we followed this past year. Mr. Tubbs plans to go over this at our August meeting. He asked for suggestions from us if we had any. Last night I made the suggestion that we reward someone, if they would take an aggressive role in writing grants. I think we could get more grants if this happened. I also suggested if possible for the teachers that are volunteering so much time for free, coaching and running other extra curricular activities, to get a little extra. I think there is still a lot to do before this issue is finalized for next year.
I asked about the technology. Basically we will watch and see how this works out for the other districts that are starting this program for this next school year, to help guide us in what we do later on.
I asked if we have received grants for the bleachers. He said not yet, but are still working on getting two of them. I asked if we are working on grants for other things. He said yes Keith Drake received a grant for a cooler to use in his class room. As I said before we need to have someone more involved with writing grants.
April and I are going to a regional board training in August at Rigby. I think it will be a good program. I wish the whole board was able to go. I will report on it after we attend. We also qualify for some free training that we might do after attending the regional training and can decide what we might like to learn.
I asked if we knew the results of the ISAT tests yet. The state has had some computer problems so the results are not out yet, but will be soon.
I also asked about the attendance issues with the state to find out if the problem was resolved yet. He thinks it should be, but is still waiting for more information.
I asked at our meeting last night if they had decided what repairs and maintenance to do. Mr. Tubbs gave me a list of all the projects and the cost breakdown, I won't list them all here, but there is a lot to do. A lot of painting projects. The total student occupied fund spending if everything is done adds up to $142,000. $120,000 of this is the new bleachers. Which by the way we were give a drawing of them, and they will look very nice. They will be mostly blue, with black and white seats spelling out on the upper side Firth and on the lower side Cougars. The projected expense for non student occupied is $17,700. A big part of this is for the berm work at the middle school and some asphalt repairs at the elementary and high school, and some repairs around the baseball field.
We approved a policy update regarding the evaluation of certificated personnel.
I have a feeling like I left something out, but can't think of what it might be. This blog starts the second year of me writing a blog about board meetings. Overall I think this is the 38th blog I have written. I hope many feel it is worth the read. It provides me with a journal of what happend in the past that I can go back and refer to. I will be with my wife and daughter in Orlando at the FCCLA competition during next month meeting. So if you want to know whats going on you will just have to go to the meeting and find out. I don't like missing meetings, but I need to support my daughter. Without me there the meeting will probably go a lot faster. I was kidding my wife with giving the committee report and all the other comments and questions I seem to almost always come up with. That they need to put an item on the agenda just for me to ask my questions and provide comments. I think July is when the board leadership is voted on. I hope you all have a good summer. As always if you have comments or questions let me know. I wish someone could write a blog about next months meeting so I could find out the details of what happens. Thanks, Brian
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Basics of our district funding
To all my blog readers, I am going to try and explain the school budget in a way everyone can understand, at least as close to as well as I understand the budget. I am starting to write this while I am on vacation in Jackson. I had hoped to publish this after our budget work meeting, but lacked some details I wanted to have before I could explain things very well. I called and got more answers to the budget questions that I had, but was advised to wait to publish anything until after the budget details are published on June 7th a week before the board meeting. There is some concern if I publish something different than what the final budget is, it would be inappropriate, and could cause some problems. So I will wait and publish this after that date, even though I am going to write most of the information while I have time, and then I will go back and edit numbers where it's necessary.
First of all I am not going to try and publish exact numbers. I don't think that is necessary to explain the budget. As with many budgets, especially my own business budget, no budget ever comes out exactly as planned. There are many variables in how we get our funding. When you depend on most of your funding coming from the state and federal governments, there can be many variables. Things like how many students we have and how high our attendance is can make a lot of difference. So consider the numbers I write as estimates, I will give more exact numbers and more details as I learn them later. Even the amount of students that qualify for free and reduced lunches effects our funding. We are going to get a grant again next year to pay for an afternoon nutrition break in the elementary, which really helps those kids make it through the longer four day schedule. We qualify for this because of the percentage of students that qualify for the free and reduced lunches. This also effects the money we get for aides under the federal funded title 1 program that helps educate disadvantaged students. So it is very important to have patrons fill out the paperwork to see if you qualify for this aide even if you choose not to participate. This fund is about $98,000 and can only be used to help disadvantaged students. These funds used to help pay for summer school. This fund is less than it used to be, and no longer is enough to cover the summer school program, so we were forced to cut it. I hope at some point we will be able to come up with the funding to bring this program back.
Since I started with federal funds I will continue with them. Another fund is called the Title VI-B School-Age fund. This fund goes to the students identified as having special needs. There are about 80 students identified for help under this program. Many of these students have problems reading. Students are tested to see if they qualify for help and a plan called an IEP is written to determine what help is necessary. The school is required by law to provide whatever help these students need even if we don't get enough federal dollars to pay for it. There are some students that require one on one aide that we have to pay for. The money we receive for this program doesn't cover all the costs we have, and can change from year to year depending on what the needs are. The funding for this program is about $167,000. There is another similar program for preschool children ages 3-5. This past year we had 11 students in this program. They have been identified as learning delayed. This funding has been about $17,000.
Another federal fund is called Perkins Vocational Education. This is a program for vocational education, or also called professional technical education. I understand many years ago we used to have certified nurses assistant education which was part of this program. This fund is only $8,000.
Another federal fund is called Title II-A Improving Teacher Quality. This fund helps to maintain small class sizes in grades K-3. It can also be used to better train teachers teaching those grades. The money we get is about $30,000. For us we use this money to help fund a teaching position.
The school food service is partly funded through Federal Funds. The lunch ladies do a very good job managing the lunch program. There has been a lot of changes in nutrition programs with more to come. With the Federal Funds and what is charged for the meals this is a self sustaining program. We used to have to supplement this partly with General Fund dollars, but that hasn't been necessary for at least the last two years. The only cost is the requirement by the state for us to pay the FICA taxes for the lunch employees. The cost of this is $6500.
All these federal funds can only go to their intended purpose, we can't use them in other areas, and in some cases require us to supplement them from our general budget funds.
Now on to the state and local funding. There are two Plant Facility Funds. One for Non-Student Occupied Funding and one for Student Occupied. We are required to put 2% of the value of our buildings and I think other fixed assets into these funds. I'm not quite sure how this is calculated but it amounts to somewhere between $165,000 to $180,000 each year. Part of the funding comes from the ten year Plant Facilities tax levy we passed last year for $95,000 each year. The major expense out of this fund is for buying buses. A bus costs over $80,000. We used to buy one bus a year, but in recent years have bought one every other year. Last year's audit report listed the Non-Student Occupied Fund at $650,000 and the Student Occupied Fund at $290,000. The Student Occupied (SO) Fund is what we used to buy our high school bleachers. They cost around $121,000. Each year the Administrators come up with a wish list of repairs and replacement projects, that are funded with these funds. Other examples of SO funds are desks and tables for class rooms, new carpeting and painting. There are many projects that need done in restrooms and locker rooms. There are also some projects that need done in the school kitchens. We try to maintain a good balance to cover major expenses that might come up like roof repairs or replacement, or what you might call the dreaded elementary boiler failure.
Some examples of Non-Stuendent Occupied expenses are work that is needed around the baseball and football fields. Whatever we decide to do with the area between the high school and seminary building and any work on asphalt, or painting asphalt. The elementary needs work done around the play grounds. The middle school needs work around the berms to prevent water from getting into the school. These items will be prioritized and it will be determined which projects to complete this year. But to restate, we are required to fund it at these levels, and the fund can only be used for these type of projects. The Plant Facilities Levy money makes it a lot easier to fund this account, so the $95,000 doesn't have to come out of the too little general funding we get.
Another state fund is called the Vocational Technical Fund. This fund helps pay for the Professional Technical Education programs, like the Ag programs, clerical, consumer homemaking and child care programs. It also includes technology and informational training, and the equipment to run these programs. We get $34,000 from this state fund. Not near enough to provide all the funding necessary for these programs, but it helps.
We also have some funds that help support the Drivers Education Program. We get $125 per student and charge the students $75. This has been provided three times a year. Years ago we used to have a car provided rent free from a car dealership, but no more. I think this is basically cost neutral, but the car is very old and I don't know what we will do when it's too worn out to use anymore. I understand the cost for private lessons is around $300.
We also have a Property Tax Bond for the middle school. It is for about $250,000 each year, and pays off in June of 2014. As I have stated before I had hoped we could get by on our budget without trying for another levy until our bond pays off. At that point I hope we can propose a levy for about the same amount to better restore our funding, maybe bring back programs we have cut like summer school, and to bring our contingency funding back up to better levels.
The major part of our state funding is for our teachers and administrators. We are funded 1.1 teachers for every unit of students we have. I have explained what consists of a unit in the past. We have 41.5 units that can fund about 45.5 teachers. But because of funding cuts, the state allows us to reduce our teachers by, I think, up to 9% and use that extra money to help fund our Maintenance & Operation budget. This next year we will have 41.5 teachers. We are funded 3.1 administrators and have 3. Our teacher payroll is about $2,232,000. Our administrators are funded at $182,000 and we pay out $208,000. Because we have tried to keep from dropping our teacher, administrator, and other staff salaries too far. We pay out a total of about $78,000 more for all our staff than we get reimbursed for. I think the staff has had a series of pay cuts over at least the last three years, because the state keeps cutting the funding. We have tried to cover the cut from last year of about 1.67%, partly by reducing staff and using some of that funding to supplement the rest.
Now I finely come to our General Maintenance & Operation fund. This is an area where we have had major cuts from the state. This is only about 10% of our total budget. This is used for general funding, salaries, benefits, supplies, training, textbooks, classroom equipment, administrative costs, utilities, maintenance, general upkeep, and transportation. We used to be funded about $24,000 per unit. This past year it had dropped to $19,626 per unit. If you heard on the news from Tom Luna that they have funded our schools better for next year, this funding will go back up by only $80 per unit or a grand total of $3,320. Shouldn't we all be grateful, but I digress. The M&O estimate total for next year is about $818,000. This is often referred to as our discretionary funding. But in reality most of this isn't really discretionary.
The state provides us a benefit apportionment that provides the FICA and Persi benefits for our staff which is estimated at about $403,000. We have to pay for the rest of the benefits, like insurance, from the general fund and that amount is about another $460,000.
Another big chunk of the M&O budget is for electrical and other utilities. Also for garbage removal and janitorial services. The budget for these services for next year is estimated at about $360,000. This fund is also used for textbooks, computers, and other things I mentioned earlier. So as you can add this up, the M&O budget isn't nearly as high as it needs to be. As I have said in the past, Senator Bair says they will eventually get this funding back up to the $24,000 it used to be. But if they don't increase it more than $80 a year it will take a long time to get there.
We are also projecting a transportation allowance from the state of $185,000. The state reimburses us 85% of the cost from home to school, and only 50% for shop supplies and other costs. They don't provide any funding for field trips, athletics, or any other activity.
We get a token amount from the state that is supposed to replace some of the property tax funding we used to get through AG taxes. This amount is estimated at about $17,500, and is added into our M&O Budget.
As far as I know this is the total funding and where it goes. This is very long, but I hope for those interested you found this informative and now better understand our budget. There are other things like depreciation and other details I still don't understand, but this should explain most things. Last year we had a deficit budget of $232,000. I don't know the details of how we ended up, and until our annual audit in August we won't know the final numbers. But I can say we did much better than projected. Everyone needs to give our management team a lot of credit in how the budget was managed. We have a history of being conservative as a board and administration and being that way has really helped prepare us for these lean times. I can't forget the help we get from the PTO and all the teachers and patrons that donate their time and money to help our schools. We will still have a negative budget, but not really bad. If I remember right from what I have read, we are one of only a handful of districts that don't have a levy. One comparison to make is with Aberdeen. I think they have close to the same number of students that we have. I think for at least the last two years they have approved a $600,000 levy for each year, and are projecting a contingency fund of only a few hundred dollars. We started the last school year with over $800,000 in our contingency fund. Thanks again for your support. If you have any questions let me know and I will try and answer them. If you have comments or other input, I would welcome that also. I wish I could publish this tonight. Other than some editing I actually finished this at 12:30 a.m. on May 30th. I don't think what I have said would be a problem, but since I told them I would wait I will. Brian
Last night I received the budget notice from the district office. If there are differences in what I was given last week and what was sent to me last night, they aren't much different. I have provided a lot of details to explain our budget, but keep in mind all my numbers may not be exact. I was given an estimate of what we will use out of our contingency fund and about where our budget ended up this year, but I will wait until after our budget meeting next week to provide those numbers, in case the board does something different that might change our budget for next year. This information is something I have wanted to understand and share for a long time. Thanks again. Brian
First of all I am not going to try and publish exact numbers. I don't think that is necessary to explain the budget. As with many budgets, especially my own business budget, no budget ever comes out exactly as planned. There are many variables in how we get our funding. When you depend on most of your funding coming from the state and federal governments, there can be many variables. Things like how many students we have and how high our attendance is can make a lot of difference. So consider the numbers I write as estimates, I will give more exact numbers and more details as I learn them later. Even the amount of students that qualify for free and reduced lunches effects our funding. We are going to get a grant again next year to pay for an afternoon nutrition break in the elementary, which really helps those kids make it through the longer four day schedule. We qualify for this because of the percentage of students that qualify for the free and reduced lunches. This also effects the money we get for aides under the federal funded title 1 program that helps educate disadvantaged students. So it is very important to have patrons fill out the paperwork to see if you qualify for this aide even if you choose not to participate. This fund is about $98,000 and can only be used to help disadvantaged students. These funds used to help pay for summer school. This fund is less than it used to be, and no longer is enough to cover the summer school program, so we were forced to cut it. I hope at some point we will be able to come up with the funding to bring this program back.
Since I started with federal funds I will continue with them. Another fund is called the Title VI-B School-Age fund. This fund goes to the students identified as having special needs. There are about 80 students identified for help under this program. Many of these students have problems reading. Students are tested to see if they qualify for help and a plan called an IEP is written to determine what help is necessary. The school is required by law to provide whatever help these students need even if we don't get enough federal dollars to pay for it. There are some students that require one on one aide that we have to pay for. The money we receive for this program doesn't cover all the costs we have, and can change from year to year depending on what the needs are. The funding for this program is about $167,000. There is another similar program for preschool children ages 3-5. This past year we had 11 students in this program. They have been identified as learning delayed. This funding has been about $17,000.
Another federal fund is called Perkins Vocational Education. This is a program for vocational education, or also called professional technical education. I understand many years ago we used to have certified nurses assistant education which was part of this program. This fund is only $8,000.
Another federal fund is called Title II-A Improving Teacher Quality. This fund helps to maintain small class sizes in grades K-3. It can also be used to better train teachers teaching those grades. The money we get is about $30,000. For us we use this money to help fund a teaching position.
The school food service is partly funded through Federal Funds. The lunch ladies do a very good job managing the lunch program. There has been a lot of changes in nutrition programs with more to come. With the Federal Funds and what is charged for the meals this is a self sustaining program. We used to have to supplement this partly with General Fund dollars, but that hasn't been necessary for at least the last two years. The only cost is the requirement by the state for us to pay the FICA taxes for the lunch employees. The cost of this is $6500.
All these federal funds can only go to their intended purpose, we can't use them in other areas, and in some cases require us to supplement them from our general budget funds.
Now on to the state and local funding. There are two Plant Facility Funds. One for Non-Student Occupied Funding and one for Student Occupied. We are required to put 2% of the value of our buildings and I think other fixed assets into these funds. I'm not quite sure how this is calculated but it amounts to somewhere between $165,000 to $180,000 each year. Part of the funding comes from the ten year Plant Facilities tax levy we passed last year for $95,000 each year. The major expense out of this fund is for buying buses. A bus costs over $80,000. We used to buy one bus a year, but in recent years have bought one every other year. Last year's audit report listed the Non-Student Occupied Fund at $650,000 and the Student Occupied Fund at $290,000. The Student Occupied (SO) Fund is what we used to buy our high school bleachers. They cost around $121,000. Each year the Administrators come up with a wish list of repairs and replacement projects, that are funded with these funds. Other examples of SO funds are desks and tables for class rooms, new carpeting and painting. There are many projects that need done in restrooms and locker rooms. There are also some projects that need done in the school kitchens. We try to maintain a good balance to cover major expenses that might come up like roof repairs or replacement, or what you might call the dreaded elementary boiler failure.
Some examples of Non-Stuendent Occupied expenses are work that is needed around the baseball and football fields. Whatever we decide to do with the area between the high school and seminary building and any work on asphalt, or painting asphalt. The elementary needs work done around the play grounds. The middle school needs work around the berms to prevent water from getting into the school. These items will be prioritized and it will be determined which projects to complete this year. But to restate, we are required to fund it at these levels, and the fund can only be used for these type of projects. The Plant Facilities Levy money makes it a lot easier to fund this account, so the $95,000 doesn't have to come out of the too little general funding we get.
Another state fund is called the Vocational Technical Fund. This fund helps pay for the Professional Technical Education programs, like the Ag programs, clerical, consumer homemaking and child care programs. It also includes technology and informational training, and the equipment to run these programs. We get $34,000 from this state fund. Not near enough to provide all the funding necessary for these programs, but it helps.
We also have some funds that help support the Drivers Education Program. We get $125 per student and charge the students $75. This has been provided three times a year. Years ago we used to have a car provided rent free from a car dealership, but no more. I think this is basically cost neutral, but the car is very old and I don't know what we will do when it's too worn out to use anymore. I understand the cost for private lessons is around $300.
We also have a Property Tax Bond for the middle school. It is for about $250,000 each year, and pays off in June of 2014. As I have stated before I had hoped we could get by on our budget without trying for another levy until our bond pays off. At that point I hope we can propose a levy for about the same amount to better restore our funding, maybe bring back programs we have cut like summer school, and to bring our contingency funding back up to better levels.
The major part of our state funding is for our teachers and administrators. We are funded 1.1 teachers for every unit of students we have. I have explained what consists of a unit in the past. We have 41.5 units that can fund about 45.5 teachers. But because of funding cuts, the state allows us to reduce our teachers by, I think, up to 9% and use that extra money to help fund our Maintenance & Operation budget. This next year we will have 41.5 teachers. We are funded 3.1 administrators and have 3. Our teacher payroll is about $2,232,000. Our administrators are funded at $182,000 and we pay out $208,000. Because we have tried to keep from dropping our teacher, administrator, and other staff salaries too far. We pay out a total of about $78,000 more for all our staff than we get reimbursed for. I think the staff has had a series of pay cuts over at least the last three years, because the state keeps cutting the funding. We have tried to cover the cut from last year of about 1.67%, partly by reducing staff and using some of that funding to supplement the rest.
Now I finely come to our General Maintenance & Operation fund. This is an area where we have had major cuts from the state. This is only about 10% of our total budget. This is used for general funding, salaries, benefits, supplies, training, textbooks, classroom equipment, administrative costs, utilities, maintenance, general upkeep, and transportation. We used to be funded about $24,000 per unit. This past year it had dropped to $19,626 per unit. If you heard on the news from Tom Luna that they have funded our schools better for next year, this funding will go back up by only $80 per unit or a grand total of $3,320. Shouldn't we all be grateful, but I digress. The M&O estimate total for next year is about $818,000. This is often referred to as our discretionary funding. But in reality most of this isn't really discretionary.
The state provides us a benefit apportionment that provides the FICA and Persi benefits for our staff which is estimated at about $403,000. We have to pay for the rest of the benefits, like insurance, from the general fund and that amount is about another $460,000.
Another big chunk of the M&O budget is for electrical and other utilities. Also for garbage removal and janitorial services. The budget for these services for next year is estimated at about $360,000. This fund is also used for textbooks, computers, and other things I mentioned earlier. So as you can add this up, the M&O budget isn't nearly as high as it needs to be. As I have said in the past, Senator Bair says they will eventually get this funding back up to the $24,000 it used to be. But if they don't increase it more than $80 a year it will take a long time to get there.
We are also projecting a transportation allowance from the state of $185,000. The state reimburses us 85% of the cost from home to school, and only 50% for shop supplies and other costs. They don't provide any funding for field trips, athletics, or any other activity.
We get a token amount from the state that is supposed to replace some of the property tax funding we used to get through AG taxes. This amount is estimated at about $17,500, and is added into our M&O Budget.
As far as I know this is the total funding and where it goes. This is very long, but I hope for those interested you found this informative and now better understand our budget. There are other things like depreciation and other details I still don't understand, but this should explain most things. Last year we had a deficit budget of $232,000. I don't know the details of how we ended up, and until our annual audit in August we won't know the final numbers. But I can say we did much better than projected. Everyone needs to give our management team a lot of credit in how the budget was managed. We have a history of being conservative as a board and administration and being that way has really helped prepare us for these lean times. I can't forget the help we get from the PTO and all the teachers and patrons that donate their time and money to help our schools. We will still have a negative budget, but not really bad. If I remember right from what I have read, we are one of only a handful of districts that don't have a levy. One comparison to make is with Aberdeen. I think they have close to the same number of students that we have. I think for at least the last two years they have approved a $600,000 levy for each year, and are projecting a contingency fund of only a few hundred dollars. We started the last school year with over $800,000 in our contingency fund. Thanks again for your support. If you have any questions let me know and I will try and answer them. If you have comments or other input, I would welcome that also. I wish I could publish this tonight. Other than some editing I actually finished this at 12:30 a.m. on May 30th. I don't think what I have said would be a problem, but since I told them I would wait I will. Brian
Last night I received the budget notice from the district office. If there are differences in what I was given last week and what was sent to me last night, they aren't much different. I have provided a lot of details to explain our budget, but keep in mind all my numbers may not be exact. I was given an estimate of what we will use out of our contingency fund and about where our budget ended up this year, but I will wait until after our budget meeting next week to provide those numbers, in case the board does something different that might change our budget for next year. This information is something I have wanted to understand and share for a long time. Thanks again. Brian
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