The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Minor cuts mean a consistent stream of funding
With a quick meeting and a nod of approval, the Gunnison Watershed School District RE1J adopted a budget for the 2012/13 school year on Monday, June 11. The budget wasn’t as lean as it might have been had the state not come through with enough funding to maintain the local district’s share from last year.
This year, however, the property valuation the district bases its income on remains down nearly $150 million, which forced the district to adjust the tax levy up nearly 2.1 mills to this year’s level of 25.972.
But the big news for this year’s budget cycle was the cut that never came, or came and went, ultimately leaving the district to deal with a drop in state funding of just $11,000. In the two years prior, the reduction in state funding amounted to about $1.5 million from the district’s budget.
The state also reinstated its program guaranteeing school districts interest-free loans that help nearly half the state’s districts bridge a funding gap between the start of school and the time property taxes come in the spring.
District administrators are expecting the student body to stay roughly the same size next year, with enrollment set in the budget at 1,724. “Staying flat is as best a guess as we can make at this point,” RE1J Finance Department Business Manager Stephanie Juneau says. A final count will come in October.
One thing the district needs to work out before next year is a minor discrepancy between the amount of revenue projected for next year and expenditures that stemmed from a few late additions to the district’s costs, like one student expected next year who will require special services.
“Because those needs were somewhat significant, we had to add in a couple of educational assistants to help with those potential students,” Juneau said. “We went ahead and decreased a potential vehicle purchase to offset some of those costs.” So the transportation department will have to live with one mini-bus, instead of two, if that’s what they choose to do with their budget next year. But it won’t be Juneau’s recommendation.
Instead the district is shuffling some of its funding around to handle the capital expenses coming in the next few years, like vehicle and textbook purchases. Those changes are draining a portion of the reserve fund, taking it from 25 percent of the general fund expenditures in a year down to 15.5 percent. Juneau expects the district to be able to maintain its fund balance for the remainder of this year.
Projections for the upcoming year show some line items going a little over budget, while others, like utilities, are under, “but there is one major thing that is not going to happen this fiscal year—the completion of the social studies curriculum purchase,” Juneau said. “We’re retaining $20,000 of that money and not putting it in right now. That money will go into the capital reserve fund so that as future needs are identified that might not be textbooks but technology-based, we can put those funds back in.”
A copy of the Gunnison RE1J school district budget can be found online at gunnisonschools.net at the bottom of the ‘Financial Information’ page under the ‘School Board’ tab.
