Financial Update!

 Good afternoon! 

I know it's been a while so I thought I would share some things that have been on the minds of our leadership.  First of all, I hope you are all navigating through this stressful year and finding time to take care of yourself and your families.

 At our executive board meeting last Wednesday we discussed the financial health of our district (which is very good) and how to change the mindset/dialogue of the past.  I have been here for over 20 years and we have had some very tough times financially speaking.  This has changed and I wanted to start the conversation about shifting our mindset and conversations.  We have for so long been "scared" to spend money and we now need to start thinking about how best to "invest" in our district.  I know we have heard some administrators say, but we have to save that money because we have declining enrollment.  This mindset is short sited and we will never grow as a district thinking that way. We do need to be good stewards of this money but if we don't start to put this money in places that will improve and grow our district, we could be stuck in a place we have been in the past.   To show you that this is false thinking, I am going to share some information that has been prepared by Tim Olson.  Below you will see a graphic that shows that we do in fact have a declining enrollment.  However, our district has increased the fund balance significantly in each of the last 5 years. Even if you don't like math you can see to go from 1.4 million to 5.8 million dollars is a huge increase. The last row shows the fund balance as a number.  I will also share the budget amendment that was passed at the board meeting in December (the last row shows the fund balance as a percentage.  Are you ready????? We are projected to have over a 27% fund balance at the end of this year (June 2021!) This of course includes our increase in pay this year.  

By the way to give you some perspective, with that large pay increase we went from dead last in the county to 2nd to last.  So although we gained a lot, in a teacher shortage we are not going to attract/keep good teachers with that pay. It was simply a start in trying to correct years and years of cuts to many things including our salaries.

Next week, our district will start the process of strategic planning, to identify needs and develop a plan for our district over the next 5 years.  I am so excited that they are including us in that discussion!  We definitely need a direction and path to invest those dollars back in our district and we are the experts on what is needed on a day to day basis in our schools. 

This is a really exciting time for our district, and some good news in the middle of a pandemic!

****Note: both the last column in the budget and General Fund Surplus represent this current school year which will not be completed until June so this number and percentage are projections.