FeedsSchool budget reduced, flexible
Members of the Northville Board of Education approved last week a new budget designed to forestall a potential shortfall and provide flexibility at the same time.
The board had been on the cusp of approving a new $63 million budget at the beginning of June when concerns about enrollment projections caused them to take another look at it.
At the time, the most recent projections forecast an increase of about 200 students, not the 260 district officials had expected.
“We’re still growing, we’re just not growing at the rate we’ve seen for the past several years,” said Board President Karen Paciorek.
The result of a smaller increase in students was a potentially smaller increase in revenue. District officials met in a study session in mid-June to determine how best to trim the budget. They approved those changes last Tuesday.
The largest savings came from not hiring the staff that would have been necessary to accommodate the new students, according to Ken Roth, vice president of the Northville school board.
Board members chose to hang on to an additional $100,000 in case the projections change again, he said. That way the district has the ability to hire two more teachers, if necessary.
The enrollment count is one variable that school districts have to deal with when they plan their budget. It’s generally accepted in a community that has outpaced most of its neighbors with new development that additional families are on the way, but how many and where they’ll move to is less certain.
It would be ideal if the newcomers were widely spread throughout the community, but that’s rarely the case.
“What inevitably happens is you’ll see a large number of new students in one particular grade at one school,” Roth said.
That forces the school board to think about altering class sizes or boundaries or staff levels.
Another difficulty is that state law forces school boards to approve their budgets before the state is required to set its budget. That means school officials have to set their budget without knowing how much—increase in per-pupil funding they’ll receive.
“It’s a challenge for school districts across the state,” Paciorek said.
The best way to deal with it, according to Paciorek, is to constantly keep an eye on the bottom line. The district followed that rule this year, too, she said.
“We were conservative, which we usually are,” she said.
The budget can always be amended as enrollment counts solidify and the amount of funding from the state becomes clear, too, Roth said.
“It’s going to be a work in progress,” he said.
