A newly-constituted School Board could face a financial shortfall when it convenes in January.
King George school division Superintendent Candace Brown this week again told the School Board that the 2011-12 budget is based on state revenue for an average daily membership (ADM) of 4,165 students. That’s 90 more students than is indicated by the current ADM of 4,074 students.

That was the ADM number Superintendent Candace Brown said was current at the School

Board meeting on Nov. 14.

ADM is the figure in the state’s calculation for the amount of funding that goes to the locality for state basic aid.

ADM is updated in December of each year based on the Sept. 30 reported ADM figure, and then recalculated again on March 31 for the entire school and fiscal year.

Yet, there was no discussion of what the ADM figure meant in terms of loss of state revenue by the School Board.

Brown had first told the School Board on Sept. 12 that enrollment was down and could mean lower state revenue.

School Board members expressed concerns at that time two months ago, and said they wanted to carefully track the enrollment and revenue numbers.

Renee Parker urged careful scrutiny of enrollment and revenue figures so they could ensure providing two percent raises to employees in January, and saying she wanted to give the raises sooner, in November, if possible.

But no revenue numbers have been provided at School Board meetings, then or since.
The only time that revenue numbers were tossed out by Brown was not at a School Board meeting, but at a meeting of the Board of Supervisors on Sept. 20.

Brown had attended that meeting at the request of the School Board to ask for more capital money for roof repairs at the school board office building, also known as Old King George Elementary School. (See related article elsewhere in this issue.)

Brown told Supervisors at that time in September that she was concerned about lower state revenue because of lower enrollment.

At that time, she said that ADM would decrease state revenue, saying, “I would still be down $225,318, that’s just with state funds.” Since that time, the School Board has approved a transfer of $48,181 from their operating budget to help cover roof repair costs.

The School Board budget usually has more money than it needs, as evidenced by its return of hundreds of thousands each June 30 at the end of the fiscal year.

One way funds accumulated in the annual budget is by hiring in lower salaried personnel when higher paid employees retire or resign at the end of the school year.

In addition to teacher turnover, there is currently a senior administrative staff vacancy due to the retirement of Dick Roberts who had a salary of $104,171 not counting the division’s share of the cost for providing benefits for the position.

Phyllis Cook