After months of monitoring, the Jefferson School Committee voted April 6 to transfer funds within the budget to help cover unanticipated shortfalls, and to ask voters to approve further transfers and the use of other town funds to close the remainder of the gap.
School officials have been watching the numbers in Jefferson since last fall when the committee learned about an influx of both private and public secondary students to town.
The net budget shortfall is anticipated to be $86,742 and includes the costs of the extra students, a larger private school tuition rate than was budgeted for, increased special education tuition costs, and about $35,000 in unbudgeted MaineCare seed costs owed to the state for certain services for special education students.
School officials have reported using line freezes and looking for other savings to help mitigate the shortfall.
Several categories within the budget are projected to have unused funds at the end of the fiscal year – $92,640 in total – but the school committee is only allowed to transfer up to 5 percent of any individual category’s budget to another category, provided the funds are available to transfer.
Under the 5 percent rule, the committee could transfer just $43,855 of those funds, according to AOS 93 Superintendent Steve Bailey.
Categories projected to be over-expended include regular instruction by $131,001; special education by $39,470; and school administration by $8,911, according to documentation provided by Bailey.
Using the 5 percent rule, the committee voted to transfer the available $43,855 to fill the shortfall in special education and about $4,300 of the shortfall in regular instruction.
After the transfers, shortfalls of $126,616 in regular instruction and $8,911 in school administration still remain to be filled.
Voters will decide how to address those shortfalls at a special budget meeting and special budget validation referendum, which are planned to be held simultaneously with the annual budget meeting and annual budget validation referendum for the 2015-2016 education budget.
Bailey suggested the budget meeting be held the week of May 18, and the budget validation referendum be held the week of June 1.
Based on warrant articles the committee approved, for regular instruction, Jefferson voters will be asked to approve increasing the regular instruction category by the $126,616 amount and funding it using nearly $30,000 in unbudgeted revenues as well as about $97,000 of a $130,021 undesignated fund balance.
Voters will also be asked to authorize a transfer (above and beyond the 5 percent transfer the committee already approved) of $8,911 from the transportation category to cover the school administration category shortfall.
The regular instruction increase would need to be approved at the budget validation referendum, while the transfer to school administration would not, Bailey said.
Should the shortfall amounts change, the amounts could be amended by the school committee prior to their meeting with the budget committee planned for April 30, or on the floor of the budget meeting itself, officials said.
With state subsidy anticipated to drop $165,920 or 9 percent, the draft budget would be a double-whammy for Jefferson’s local share.
The town’s local share, according to the draft, would be $4,073,247, an increase of $741,968 or 22.3 percent.
The draft budget’s increase would come largely through regular instruction and special education instruction.
Regular instruction would go up $232,067 or 11.51 percent over the current year’s current budget.
Secondary tuition lines would increase about $150,000 over the current budget, but those same lines would only be about $10,000 more than the projected actual costs for those lines this year, according to school documentation.
Special education would increase $312,636, or 41.52 percent, including a $186,310 increase to secondary public tuition and about $40,000 for the transfer of a social worker position from the regular instruction budget, among other changes.
The school committee is planning two special meetings later in April to finalize any amounts for the special budget meeting, vote on a proposed budget for 2015-2016, and meet with the Jefferson Budget Committee on both issues.
The school committee is meeting on April 28 at 6 p.m., and planning a joint meeting with the budget committee on April 30.
