From the Elkhart Truth:
As local assessed valuations and enrollment numbers have declined, Elkhart Community Schools budget has grown tighter.
Like several local school districts, Elkhart has been working with Energy Education Inc. to save thousands of dollars in energy costs. Looking ahead to 2013, school officials aren’t planning on any major construction projects and may, at some point, have to look at further changing how it buses students to schools.
They are all efforts to maintain programs and facilities with the 2013 budget forecast looking somber.
Different funds in a school corporation’s budget are filled in different ways, but all have some restraints.
A school corporation’s general fund covers day-to-day expenses, including employee salaries, and is funded by the state. The amount a school receives in that fund is largely dependent on enrollment at a school.
“You grow in enrollment, you grow in your general fund,” Elkhart Community Schools support services executive director Doug Hasler said. If enrollment decreases, so does a school corporation’s general fund. “That’s what it’s been doing to us for the past three or four years.”
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School budgets’ other funds are financed by local property taxes, which bring other limits to schools’ budgets. Some of those funds are the transportation operating fund, the bus replacement fund, which covers the purchase of new buses, and the capital projects fund, which covers construction and maintenance projects.
“We have been experiencing a declining assessment in our school district,” Hasler told the school board a week ago. “That almost always results in an increase of the tax rates to maintain incoming funds.”
The “circuit breaker” tax cap on property taxes works, though, so that even as the tax rate goes up, the circuit breaker cuts off what people need to pay, Hasler said. Elkhart has lost $4.8 million because of the tax cap this year.
In order to limit expenses to the capital project fund, “we’re really doing as little as possible,” he said. Elkhart’s buildings are in fairly good shape, so don’t require much maintenance at this point. The 2013 proposed budget does allocate funds for a few school buildings’ roofing projects.
Hasler said, depending on what the school corporation’s final budget looks like, school officials may need to eventually look at altering its busing plans.
Elkhart Community Schools expanded its walk zones a few years ago to save money, and Hasler said they may need to look again at transportation options. That could mean creating a three-tiered system, where each school would have one of three different start times. That would allow enough time for a smaller number of buses to transport the same number of kids.
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The full article, including individual school budgets may be found here:
http://www.etruth.com/article/20120904/NEWS01/709049939
