BENTONVILLE -- The School Board on Monday unanimously approved a budget of $138.4 million for the 2014-15 school year.
That amount represents a decrease in expenditures of $60,000 from last school year. It's also about $76,000 less than what the School District anticipates in revenues this year.
At A Glance
Expenditures
The Bentonville School District anticipates spending $138,433,555 this school year. Here’s what the district’s operating budget has been the last four fiscal years:
2014: $138,493,642
2013: $132,879,905
2012: $121,281,090
2011: $108,467,989
Source: Staff Report
Unlike last year, the district is not factoring anticipated revenue from growth money into its budget, said Sterling Ming, director of finance. Student growth money is collected from the state based on enrollment increases throughout the school year.
Finance officials based the budget on the expectation district enrollment would increase by about 400 students to 15,422. Enrollment as of Wednesday was 15,523.
"For budget purposes, we like to be conservative," said Nathalie Brunell, director of accounting.
The fiscal year runs July 1 through June 30. The district expects to end this fiscal year with a fund balance of $24,478,372, an increase of about $76,000 over what it was July 1.
The end-of-year fund balance projects to be 17.7 percent of the district's operating budget. The board has a policy of maintaining a fund balance that is at least 17 percent of operating expenses.
Still unclear is what kind of raises district employees will receive this year. The budget proposal approved Monday contained no raises for employees; however, Ming said his goal is to propose a salary increase at the board's Oct. 6 meeting. Any raises approved would be retroactive to July 1.
He said after Oct. 1 he would have a clearer idea of what the district's enrollment will be for the year.
The district has not given raises to staff for the last three years, though certified staff members on the salary schedule have received step raises.
Ming said his salary proposal would not be the same across the board for all employees, but would be the same for classified, certified and administrative staff members.
"It will be broken out and you will see how much you're allocating to each group," Ming said. "You will see how much you can afford for salary increases and how much of that you want to allocate."
Grant Lightle, board vice president, said he thought it was important to point out the district has reduced its expenditures on salaries by nearly $1 million, mainly through attrition.
"It was painful to get there, but I think you guys did a great job to put us in a position where we can even talk about a raise," Lightle said.
The board also examined various details of the budget. Lightle questioned an increase in travel expenditures from $259,000 last year to a projected $369,000 this year, which would be a 42 percent rise.
Ming said the budgeted number is based on requests from building administrators and departments, each of which must live by their own budgets.
The district's budget is based upon 2013 property assessment of $1.6 billion, which is still below what it was before the latest recession.
"It has been six years and we're still trying to recover assessment value from 2008. Next year we will, with what the county tells us," Ming said.
The district tax collection rate was 98 percent last school year.
NW News on 09/16/2014