REPORT — Superintendent Bennie Bennett thanked the board members for their work in budget matters Monday night in his monthly address at the school board meeting. —Staff photo by Leslie Moses
The school district now has its money spending and receiving plan for the upcoming school year down to the dollar: $39.2 million.
Though the budget is thinner than last year’s plan by $2.3 million or 5.58 percent, district workers have X-ACTO-knifed unnecessary expense where possible for a workable plan.
“I used this analogy with Mr. (Bennie) Bennett,” said board member Ike Bledsoe at Monday’s board meeting, praising district workers for budget work.
“It’s sort of like doing this thing with a scalpel,” he said. “Some people think you take a chainsaw to the budget. When they see something they don’t like, they think you ought to cut it. They don’t see the repercussions and all that.”
The budget operation: cuts and prep for more
32 jobs cut
District workers say number forecasts show fewer students will be in the district for the upcoming school year, so the budget plan saves $1 million with 20 fewer classroom teachers.
The district also saves $237,624 with five fewer instructional support workers or workers like media specialists and guidance counselors, and $182,874 with two fewer administrators.
Other jobs cuts include five “classified positions” or cutting five workers without certification, saving $133,413.
A total of 32 positions were cut.
Other savings
Besides eliminating 32 positions, the district also clipped small savings, including $100,000 from “alternative school services” and $12,430 from “band purchased services.”
Cuts to “alternative school services” do not mean big changes, district administrators say.
“We’re not cutting service,” says Cynthia Downs, assistant superintendent of instruction. Downs says that enrollment within the alternative school has changed.
“They’re trying to be more creative in how we provide the service,” she said of school service providers.
As far as cuts to band programs, Susan Dowd, the district’s chief financial officer and Downs say one area cut is money for “specialized instruction” where an outside band instructor would teach a specialized lesson or assist the band director, they say.
This cut band service may include specialized instruction in the area of drum line, says Downs.
“It’s not something we’re looking to do without forever,” says Dowd.
Fatter padding
Changes to earlier budget plans include a fatter “contingency” padding to help if there are mid-year budget cuts, says Dowd.
The contingency bag now holds $418,155. A month ago, the district thought to put only $103,363 in the bag.
Another change to the budget comes from a fuller flow of state money courtesy of Act 388 funds. These Act 388 funds come after a 2006 tweaking to the taxing formula altering the money flow from homeowners’ tax to sales tax. The Act 338 funds allow for the $314,792 in extra contingency padding, says Dowd.
All together though, local and state money for Newberry is down.
Local money contributes $14.8 million to the school district budget plan, which is down from $14.9 million from last school year’s budget.
State money tosses in $24 million, a smaller total than last year’s cash flow from the state by $2.1 million, the district says.
Step still scraped
Like earlier budget plans, the final plan still includes cropping teacher’s “step” payment increase or teacher’s roughly 2 percent salary increase teachers get each year.
A move by the state legislature allowed school districts across South Carolina to opt out of this “step” to save money.
The Newberry School district said “yes” to the state’s offer, and saves about $300,000.
In its holster
To shoot down budget cuts before they eat further into money set for workers and jobs, the district has furloughs tucked in its holster, which the state legislature allowed for districts across the state.
The rules say that for every day a teacher has to go without work and pay, administrators have to have to take a two-day furlough, the state says.
The budget plan now only has one teacher-day furlough and two set for administrators, saving a total of roughly $117,472.
But the state says a total of five furlough days for teachers are allowed.
“For furlough days that are available but not used, the total savings if they are needed for mid-year cuts would be estimated at $568,173,” said Dowd.
Room to breathe
Like last year, the state again lets districts have flexibility in how it spends money.
The much mentioned “flexibility proviso” allows the Newberry district to spend money on something with a dried-up money source.
Dowd says an example of using this flexibility could be seen by spending surplus “EIA” money or Education Improvement Act funds from the fifth penny from sales tax on each dollar for something other than what was originally earmarked for that EIA money to go to.
“Basically, it’s just going from different EIA funds into other EIA funds which you might not have had quite enough to cover costs,” said Dowd. “But you do have to have some in other areas that could cover that cost.”
The approved $39.2 million budget goes in place for the fiscal year that opened yesterday and runs through June 2011.
Post a Comment
