During this past school year, Escanaba has monitored its revenues and expenditures, especially given the rocky financial picture of the State of Michigan. Extra Board of Education meetings were scheduled and held to ensure both the Board and our community is sufficiently informed about the state of our schools. Our biggest challenge has been to get reliable and timely information from the State of Michigan in order to appropriately prepare a thoughtful, balanced budget that guarantees Escanaba students the best educational offerings and opportunities we can afford.
Today, however, I am announcing positive news for Escanaba Area Public Schools, as our budget calculations now reveal a “better than expected” budget forecast due to several factors. One major factor is that the District recently learned it is eligible to receive approximately $600,000 in federal stimulus funds targeted for special education services provided during this past school year. The federal government mandates that in order for Escanaba to be able to use these funds, it must make “Maintenance of Effort,” meaning it needed to expend the same level of local funding for special education across the school years. During this past school year, given previous budget cuts and other reasons, the District was doubtful it could meet the maintenance of effort requirement, so these funds were not counted as revenue on the last budget amendment. Recently however, we learned that we DID meet this requirement and now are able to use these federal funds appropriately for this school year.
Escanaba had a large number of staff members retire in order to take advantage of the State of Michigan’s retirement incentive, and this will result in immediate savings next year. In fact, our projected unemployment costs will be reduced, as it appears we will be recalling staff who have been on layoff status. We expect that we will be hiring! The School Aid Fund at the state level is reported to be healthier than projected, and so we have redone our budget assumptions to reflect a better revenue stream from the state.
The bottom line is that District will not recommend any budget cuts for the 2010-2011 school year. We expect the wealth of academic programs and opportunities for Escanaba students to continue. In addition, it will be recommended that we run kindergarten, extra-curricular activities, transportation, and custodial services as we have done in the past.
This is welcome news to our District and to our community! Detailed information regarding revisions to the 2009-2010 budget will be presented to the Board of Education at their regular meeting on June 21, 2010 at 6:00 p.m. Following this budget amendment, a budget for the 2010-2011 school year will be shared. It is truly a “great day to be an Eskymo!”