Dr. David Hopson
People are often amazed at how fluid the district’s budget is in terms of the final numbers at the close of the budget cycle compared to the original budget proposal. As many people know, if a given account is under expended during the fiscal year, any unspent funds in that account end up being certified as Excess and Deficiency (otherwise known as E&D). If a particular account is over expended, then the school committee must authorize a transfer between accounts to balance funding verses expenditures. In reality, this is not significantly different then what happens with town budgets, except in those cases the excess is certified as “free cash” and transfers between accounts are done at special town meetings. One of the major differences between the regional district and our member towns is that the district can only keep up to 5% of the budget in E&D whereas the towns are essentially unlimited in practical terms (hence some towns have Free Cash and Reserves nearly equal to their town budgets). The district also cannot spend money out of E&D without town approval and the most common use of these funds is to reduce town assessments in the following year’s budget.
What makes for these excesses or deficiencies in the budget? The district’s budget is usually put together in late fall/early winter, approved by the school committee in March, and put into place at the beginning of the fiscal year (July 1). From late fall to the beginning of school the district often has changes in staffing which impact both salary and benefit line items. For example, we typically budget the average teacher salary and benefits for positions we know we’ll have to fill. If a new hire comes in at less than the average salary, and/or doesn’t take health insurance, then that account will have a surplus. On the flip side, if a new hire is well above the average salary and elects a family health insurance plan, those line items could be deficient by the end of the year. As you can see, the more changes in staffing throughout the year, the more opportunities for the final expenditures to be different than originally allotted. Similar changes occur in other budget categories, i.e., will the winter temperature be much lower than the past several years causing an increase in utilities used and therefore cost? Will benefit costs rise more or less than anticipated (the date for changes in health insurance premiums is in March for Gateway, essentially well through the budget year when we finally learn the actual increase)? Will additional staff take maternity/paternity leave causing an increase in substitute costs? As with any household budget, changes are hard to anticipate but need to be accounted for as the year progresses.
Since the budget was initially developed, Gateway has encountered significant changes in staffing. The latest changes are administrative with Elizabeth Bienia (assistant K-6 principal) leaving to take a new position as a school principal in Springfield and Angela Burke (Director of Technology) leaving to take a position as Chief Information Officer for the Collaborative for Educational Services. These individuals are both moving on to positions of greater responsibility and opportunities, something we have to expect as people move through their professional lives (much as Todd Gazda and Joan Wickman did leaving their positions as principals in the district to become superintendents). While we always hate to see good people move out of the district, we understand that we had the opportunity to work with, and benefit from, their time in the district. To that end, we always wish staff moving on to better positions the best and hope that they will be as successful in new positions as they were in their prior positions in the district.
