The Shoreline School District’s savings account has come up short.
$925,000 short, to be exact.
This past school year, district officials set their sights on attaining a $2.2 million ending fund balance for the 2004-2005 budget. The actual figure for the year, as presented to the school board Nov. 17, is $1.275 million, about half of the recommended 5 percent of the total budget, officials said.
District officials said that even though they did not meet their goal for the ending fund balance, they are still pleased with where the district stands financially.
“We’ve gone from a negative $3 million 24 months ago, to a plus $1.2 million now,” superintendent Jim Welsh said. “The fact is that we are on solid financial footing.”
Officials estimate they will be able to make up the remaining $925,000 within six months to a year.
There are several reasons the ending fund balance did not reach the $2.2 million mark this year, Welsh said.
When the district projected in January a significant decline in enrollment, and in turn, an estimated $4,800 loss of state funding per full time equivalent student, officials tried to make up for the loss by cutting budgeted non-employee related costs by 30 percent. As the year went on, it became clear that NERC’s could not withstand that significant of a cut without individual programs suffering, so the 30 percent reduction was adjusted accordingly.
The loss of enrollment also resulted in less federal money for special education and bilingual students, Welsh said, and the state lottery brought in fewer dollars for the district than expected.
Additionally, the estimated amount of past-due day care tuition the district hoped to collect “was not as much as we thought — we weren’t able to realize that amount at this time,” Welsh said. And, he added, fewer student-purchased materials for classes from the district were purchased last year than they had projected.
Welsh is quick to explain that the district’s final ending fund balance is not a result of spending virtual dollars. Instead, it is simply a part of how a school district’s budget works.
“This represents unrealized revenue dollars – the budget is based on forecasting, its a guesstimation,” Welsh said.
Representatives from the Shoreline Education Association said they are concerned that the district’s past budget issues will continue into the next fiscal year. The school board revealed a $7.2 million mistake in their annual budget last year that resulted in severe budget cuts.
“Our members have expressed concerns to me that we were told these budget issues would be fixed and there would not be any more of these kinds of things,” said SEA president Cheryl Ricevuto.
Ricevuto doubts Welsh’s statement that there will be no negative effect from the lower ending funding balance.
“We are budgeted for this year and we are budgeted to continue without any kind of cutbacks or negative consequences to the district,” Welsh said.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
