Sorry this has taken me so long to write. I have been very busy since getting back from my vacation to California.
This was a short meeting without very much business to discuss. The main matter of business was having our district audit report presented by Morgan Hatt. He provided us with some interesting information about our current budget status as well as how school funding has changed over the years.
Our capital outlay was a lot higher because of our purchase of the high school bleachers and a school bus. With all our funding sources added up we received about $64,000 less than the year before. Our federal funding was down over $200,000. Our funding would have been a lot worse without the $113,600 we received for the pay for performance plan. If you don't count the extra capital expenses we spent $5801 per student. We had 751 students last year. We have about 776 students this year. It is good to see our enrollment going up some after several years of declines. Part of the reason for the increase is because we went to open enrollment. This school year with the help of the Education Foundation we are rewarding attendance at school. Last year our average attendance was 96%, a 2% increase from the year before. It will be interesting to see how this years attendance ends up. We were told that an Idaho Falls district spends over $15,000 per student, an amazing amount compared to Firth. But overall we are not much different than most districts.
If you followed my blogs about my conversations with Senator Bair and my letters to the newspapers, where I wrote about our school unit funding, and about how it bothered me that Mr. Luna and others made it sound as if they had done such a good job of restoring our funds, this was illustrated in the audit report. Our main funding comes from the unit funds. A unit is a formula of how many students we have and the ages of the students. We had a total of 151.4 units, and received $19,706 for each unit for a total of $2,983,488.40. The year before our unit funding was $19,626 per unit, so we gained a paltry $80 more per unit or around $12,000 more. Not much difference. In the year 2010 our unit funding was $25,459. Based on this past years units if we had been funded at the same level as 2010, we would have received an whopping $871,004.20 more. So $12,000 doesn't even make a real dent in the funding difference.
Some other things Mr. Hatt pointed out. We used to receive a separate budget amount for our share of the state lottery funds. In the year2009 this amount was $49,588, a nice check courtesy of the lottery. Since then they just somehow factor the lottery money in their funding formula. So there is no way to know what if anything we really get from the lottery. In the year 2009 we also received $53,500 for facility maintenance, and $34,700 for early retirement. Funds we haven't received since. Funding for class supplies of over $13,000 and AG replacement of close to $13,000 ended in the year 2011. He didn't specify amounts, or even bring it up, but our transportation reimbursement has dropped a lot too. Mr. Hatt expressed his concern for our schools if our funding from the state doesn't increase. I brought up how they are emphasizing getting a college education on TV and on the radio, but they need to do more for schools.
A couple other items presented. Thanks to Mrs. Obama's push to have healthier school lunches, our school lunch participation rate dropped from 66% in 2012 to 55% last year. Just because it may be a little healthier doesn't mean the kids will eat it. Another fact that shows how things have changed. In 2006 43% of the meals served were paid in full by the families. Now only 32% are paid in full. So to me this even makes the participation rate worse, considering how many could eat for a reduced price, or free.
The district overall fund balance is $782,762. The administration has done a good job of controlling our costs. We have cut a lot of things to maintain our fund balance. There are things that will need more funding soon, that we can't keep putting off. This is why we also have a committee working on our Strategic Plan. There is several on this committee including Bart from our board. They are going to report their progress at a future meeting.
Casey talked about our board goals. After some discussion it was decided we need to get our Strategic Plan updated and tie our goals to the plan. We also need to frequently discuss our plan and goals which we haven't done very well.
We then discussed some policy updates. One of them is how we handle sex education in school, and the procedure when parents don't want their kids to participate. We had some questions about this policy that will be clarified at our next meeting.
Well that is pretty much all that was discussed. As often happens, I seem to write a lot more than I think I will. I hope you find this information informative. If you have questions about our budget or other comments or concerns let me know. After traveling through California and stopping briefly in Las Vegas, I'm sure glad I live where I do. Thanks, Brian
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