Description: Spending
Board of Education: $90,300
Business Management: $247,513
Community Relations: $318,309
Counselors: $797,480
Elementary Instruction: $16,258,435
Equity: $63,570
Fiscal: $1,332,894
Gifted and Talented: $223,073
GMC Athletics Supplementals: $676,055
High School Instruction: $6,055,778
Human Resources: $348,600
Library Services: $462,161
Maintenance/Buildings & Grounds: $7,040,656
Middle School Instruction: $5,091,567
Non-GMC Supplementals: $194,935
Principals, Directors, Staff: $4,322,685
Safety: $439,405
Student CBE Program: $39,215
Student Services: $12,107,153
Superintendent: $818,312
Technology: $1,447,019
Transportation: $2,633,155
HB 264 Loan: $228,240
Substitutes: $1,196,278
Retirements: $513,550
Community School Deduction: 5,000,000
Open Enrollment Deduction: $1,200,000
Total: $69,146,338
Middletown City Schools has a new budget format that school officials are hoping will be much easier for the community to understand.
Treasurer Lisa Fahncke said the format organizes the district’s $69 million budget into 22 spending units, built around what the state requires public schools to provide.
Categories include “safety,” which at $439,405 covers the cost of school resource officers, crossing guards, the district’s automated notify calling system and more. There also is a “superintendent” category, which at $818,312 includes the superintendent’s salary, the secretary’s salary, legal expenses for the entire district and more.
“The new budget model provides a method for the treasurer’s office and the school district to be transparent and accountable,” said Fahncke, who had worked with the district’s finance committee since July to develop the budget system.
The format is called “modified zero-based budgeting,” which means a budgeting approach that systematically puts limited resources where they will do the most good.
Board members had asked for the format, hoping to translate spending from an abstract line on a piece of paper to a way where everything is tied to specific function.
Board President Greg Tyus said last week the new format is a better way for the community to understand how the school district spends its money — which is important for voters to understand as they will be asked to decide on tax levies next year.
“What I see us doing is coming up with a better tool that mom and dad can look at and better understand the need for an operating levy, or operating levies I should say,” Tyus said.
Still, board Vice President Katie McNeil cautions that school funding is complicated. Fahncke still will have to file separate forms with the state, such as a five-year forecast that is required of every public district.
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