One of the main jobs of a Superintendent is to figure out how to pay for all the aspects of running a school. To help everyone understand how this is done, I want to briefly explain school funding.
Schools are funded by three main sources: local property taxes, general state aid/state reimbursements and federal grants/reimbursements. Specifically, local property taxes and other local revenue comprise approximately 72.77% of the total revenues in the tentative FY 12 budget at Herscher CUSD #2. State reimbursements (General State Aid, etc…) comprises approximately 23.84% of the revenues in the FY 12 budget. Federal reimbursements and grants comprise only 3.39% of the total revenues in the FY 12 budget.
Our tentative FY 12 budget projects deficit spending of over 1.7 million dollars (most of this deficit is in the education fund which pays the majority of the expenses – salaries for employees). We currently, have about 11 million dollars in reserves with about 8.5 million in the education fund.
So, what should the school district do? In the past few years, the District has begun making cuts in supplies, reducing staff and reducing administration. However, with costs increasing and revenues not increasing (the inability of the State to fund the Schools what has been promised is also a huge reason the District is deficit spending), the District is steadily losing any revenue accrued over the last 20 years.
Potential Options:
- Ask the taxpayers to pass a referendum for the Education fund. No one wants to raise taxes and so I think everyone realizes that this will be a very unpopular option.
- Levy Working Cash Bonds to help the District minimize the deficit spending with the idea that when the economy gets better this levy will be reduced/eliminated.
- Continue to deficit spend until all reserves have been exhausted. The District could probably make it through three years of deficit spending before running out of money, if little to no “cuts” are made.
- Make severe cuts (such as closing one or more buildings, cutting student programs and/or extra-curriculars, cutting bus routes, etc…). This is definitely possible, but students and education will be directly affected.
- Some combination of the above-mentioned options. One solution might be, to make some cuts and issue a small Working Cash Bond on a yearly basis to help the District maintain a level budget every year.
