Dr. David Hopson
I was very pleased on Tuesday, November 12th when Chester became the fifth town to pass the budget, allowing the district to move forward in educating our children with a confirmed budget. I was also pleased that on Thursday, November 14th, Russell also passed Version 5.0 of the budget. This means that the district can now expend monies that were set aside for various improvements, activities, and actions that have been on hold until we were sure we had enough money to make it through the year, without resulting to drastic actions such as laying off staff. As a reminder, if the towns had not passed the budget by December 1st, the Commissioner of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education would have set the budget at whatever level he deemed appropriate.
While this is great news, some of the dissatisfaction over the process of developing the budget remains and will be addressed as we move through the next few months and begin working on next year’s budget. The school committee did get good news regarding a very favorable audit review of FY’13 which showed our fiscal house to be in excellent order and our balances to be positive (much like past audits). It was interesting to hear the questions from both the school committee and the public about the audit and the district’s financial position, which helped in understanding how people look at the district’s financial picture.
School committee members at November’s meeting also indicated that it was important to develop a ‘fall-back’ budget if Worthington is allowed to withdraw from the district. As we develop the budget each year, we seek input from staff through department heads and administrators, about what they need to improve educational access for our students. Once this information is worked into an initial budget, the entire administrative team carefully looks at the overall budget to see if there are expenditures that can be contained, reduced, or eliminated without negative effects on student opportunities. Usually by January, the school committee begins to review the proposed expenditures in the new budget, realizing that these are only our best estimates at that time (i.e., we don’t have insurance rates until later in the winter/early spring). We have had more interest in these early meetings by some towns as this is a great chance to review the budget in some detail, ask questions, and see how different line items support the education of the district’s children. In fact, this is the perfect time to raise issues and get answers regarding specific programs, activities, staffing, and overall expenditures while still being able to see the big picture and make changes relatively easily compared to mid-summer or early fall when the school year is underway.
As we’ve done in the past, we’ll be sharing the steps in the budget process, the information that is shared with the school committee, and questions and answers (as well as minutes) that are raised in either the subcommittee for finance or at regular school committee meetings. Hopefully this information will give everyone who wants to understand the process and the budget ample time and opportunity to do so well before annual town meetings. I believe we have a very open, informative, and transparent budget process but we’re always willing to consider other means to share information and take input. If you have ideas, please share them with any district administrator, with your school committee member, or send an email to [email protected]. I hope we can move forward in a collaborative manner and adopt and approve an FY’15 budget before the financial year starts on July 1, 2014.
