Howell School District Proceeding with Caution on 2011-12 Budget

After having the past few meetings cancelled due to weather, the agenda for Wednesday night's Howell Township Board of Education Meeting was the size of a small textbook. 

One of the focal points of the night was a presentation by board secretary and business administrator Ronald Sanasac on the status of the district's budget for the 2011-12 school year.

Sanasac's presentation had 15 slides full of information for the board and the members of the public in attendance. But for every piece of information, there was also a word of caution that it could all change depending on information coming from Trenton. 

Howell Township and the rest of the state will be waiting for Gov. Chris Christie's budget address, which is set to be given on Tuesday, Feb. 22. That will then set the stage for how much state aid will be coming not only to the districts, but also to the towns they serve.

The plan for the Howell district is to receive its state aid allocation number by the 24th. The tentative budget would then be presented to the board and voted on at the March 2 meeting. From there, it would be sent to the county for review two days later. If all goes according to plan, the budget should then be presented to the public on March 23, with the vote from residents set for April 27.

With less than a month until the budget is to be presented for approval to the county, the district has already started the process of putting its budget together. Sanasac said steps like having input from administrators and department heads on what they are looking for from the budget have already been completed.

In addition, the finance committee has also looked at ways to save the district money or even bring in more revenue. 

In order for the district to do everything it hopes to for the upcoming school year, it will need just more than $97 million in the general fund. That does not include bonded debt service or pass through federal grants. With $2.5 million already in the general fund, and many of the same numbers from last year plugged in, it is estimated that the district would come up $442, 674 short of its magic number.

Until the governor announces what his plans are for the upcoming year, it is too early to say what kind of a surplus or deficit the budget will have when all the final numbers are released. Any kind of cut in state aid from last year's funding will adjust the money the district will need to raise and/or affect spending decisions. As it said in one of the slides of Sanasac's presentation, "State funding shortfalls will shift more of [the] burden to local taxpayers or create need to cut."

Superintendent of Schools Enid Golden said that the district must wait to see what the state aid will look like before knowing what they will and will not be able to do for the upcoming year. As Sanasac said, the state aid could also be impacted by the federal government.

The district received more than $1 million from the Educational Jobs Funding Program. That money is intended to be used to "return needed services, reduce class size, or other district directed initiatives," according to Sanasac's presentation. 

While that money could definitely be helpful to the district, there has been talk that Christie could take that amount of money and subtract it from the money that would have come from the state. 

Golden said if the district is able to keep all the federal funding and get the same amount of state funding as last year, it could mean good things for the schools. "If that is the case, I will be recommending that the board bring back some of the positions cut from the budget last year," she said. "We need to wait until next week before we get too optimistic."