Brandon Twp.- The school board unanimously approved the 2015-16 budget Monday night, while increasing the fund balance.
The board approved a budget with revenues of $26,186,673 and expenditures of $25,711,753, adding $474,920 to the projected ending fund balance. Executive Director of Business Services Jan Meek expects the surplus to mean the district will end the 2016 fiscal year next June with a total unassigned fund balance of $3,052,473, or 11.87 percent. With a board-approved plan to assign $600,000 of that fund balance to repairs or replacement of a wastewater treatment plant, the fund balance will be taken down to $2,452,473, or 9.54 percent.
This is the third year in a row the board has balanced the budget even as the district continues to face staggering declines in enrollment.
‘We have been able to balance the budget and add to the fund balance, putting us in a good position going forward to weather the storm of continued enrollment decline,? said Meek. ‘I’m very happy. The board made tough decisions.?
Those decisions included the lay-offs of 15 teachers, part of a continuing effort to ‘right-size? the district, as well as reductions in the transportation budget. The district is decreasing the bus fleet by five and will also eliminate two bus routes.
In the past several years, the board has made many cuts as enrollment has declined by several hundred students and state funding was also lost. Among the cuts inflicting the most pain were a 7.5 percent salary decrease for teachers, as well as elimination of staffing positions.
The district is also facing a mandate by the Department of Environmental Quality to replace by 2019 the wastewater treatment plant serving the high school and middle school. The requirement has been estimated to cost the district up to $2 million, but Meek said circumstances regarding the plant may be changing.
‘We’re hiring a firm this summer to give us an extensive analysis of the system and a good quote to work off of,? she said. ‘We’ve delved into this a bit more and we believe in talking with attorneys that talk with the DEQ that repair of the system may be an option for us… We really don’t know until we get an engineering study done. We wouldn’t spend the money to repair if we are going to eventually have to replace it.?
Even as she has some optimism regarding the wastewater treatment plant, one area where the district continues to have pessimism is student enrollment.
Meek is realistic when she looks at the number of graduating seniors versus the incoming kindergarten classes, noting that 270 graduating seniors with a kindergarten class of 140 still means a lost of 130 students.
The district expects to continue to lose roughly that amount of students each year for the next few years and without any changes to state funding or adjustments to the budget, it would put the district in deficit by 2019-2020. That won’t happen, however, Meek assures, because the board will make the necessary adjustments.
‘There are year to year decisions on the staffing needs of the district, based on students,? she said. ‘If the decrease in enrollment we expect happens, most likely there will be a reduction of staff, not just teachers, but all positions. We can’t do much about utility costs and those types of things…We are hopeful that the student loss will be better than projected, but we would rather be conservative. So many districts fail to make expenditure adjustments and it becomes difficult to get out of deficit if you wait to long to make adjustments.?