One big concern I have with our School District is its financial health. There are a lot of numbers below, but hopefully this highlights a huge concern that I have. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
This is a real basic number exercise, but imagine the numbers below represent your household. You have a savings account. You have your annual salary. And the Expenses listed below is what you are actually spending each year.
2016
Savings (Start): $10,612
Salary: $43,478
Expenses: ($43,151)
Actual Surplus: +$327
Savings (End of Year): $10,939
2017
Savings (Start): $10,939
Salary: $43,890
Expenses: ($45,535)
Actual Shortfall: ($1,645)
Savings (End of Year): $9,293
2018
Savings (Start): $9,293
Salary: $45,705
Expenses: ($48,395)
Actual Shortfall: ($2,690)
Savings (End of Year): $6,604
2019
Savings (Start): $6,602
Salary: $46,853
Expenses: ($48,678)
Actual Shortfall: ($1,825)
Savings (End of Year): $4,778
2020/21 (Project/Budgeted)
Savings (Start): $4,778
Salary: $47,426
Expenses: ($48,821)
Expected Shortfall: ($1,395)
Savings (End of Year): $3,383
And now you have medical bills (COVID related expenses) that aren’t included in your budget that you are paying out of pocket. It’s likely that you will receive some money to cover those expenses (CARES Act and other acts of Congress that may occur), but there is no guarantee that all of them will be covered. All of the numbers above come from the School District’s annual report. I have taken off the last 000s to make them more relatable. The savings, “salary” and expenses are in the millions for them. One thing to note, during some of this time additional spending was taken on to do some upgrades to a couple of school and to modernize the Tech Ed facilities at the high school that fell outside of the referendum
The above numbers snapshot was taken directly from the Germantown School District website from the Finance Committee packet from the December 21, 2020 meeting. Prior to 2020, there was a Board defined goal of keeping the Fund Balance at 12%. In 2020, the Board voted to raise it to 13%. As you can see, they haven’t kept fund balance at/above their state goal since the 2018/2019 fiscal year.
When you see and review these numbers, what are your thoughts?
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