Budget is off to a Good Start...

[Chris_Wendt]

...the draft budget released by the Board of Education to the BAC is at an excellent starting point by historical standards. The good news is that the baseline, budget-to-budget comparison is 2.87% higher than this year's adjusted budget.

I would like to focus attention on this rather good news for a moment. The budget lines detail indicate a sincere effort, and a lot of time and hard decision making by many people, including Department Chairs, Directors, Principals, the Central Administration and the Board of Education. It also has removed a significant stress factor from the BAC who will not have to deal with an astronomically high preliminary budget as had been the case in many prior years. Kudos to all for that accomplishment.

Okay, so much for the ‘good news’. As the title indicates, this is a starting point, meaning, it is not the ending point for the 2011-12 budget.

What’s the other news then?

• We are losing $2 Million in revenue, and although the preliminary budget increase is a nice-sounding 2.87 percent, it is a WHOPPING $2 Million increase over the current budget. That yields an unfavorable budgetary “swing” of $4 Million, which is untenable.
• The $2 Million, 2.87% increase is calculated on the 2010-11 “adjusted budget” which is higher than the original voter-approved budget, but, more importantly, is $4.65 Million higher than the ACTUAL spending for the 2009-10 school year.
• Worse yet, the preliminary 2011-12 budget total of $71.2 Million is $5.64 Million or 8.73% HIGHER than the 2009-10 ACTUAL spending of $64/5 Million!

These other bits of news are untenable, meaning, indefensible, incapable of being defended or justified. I apologize for the harsh-sounding tone about this other news, but that is the reality of the situation.

The Central Administration and Board of Education are working to reduce the preliminary budget, and a revised document is expected to be released to the BAC next week.

I do not want to pre-judge the results of the on-going efforts, especially since the initial efforts have been so encouraging, reaching the “good news” starting point.

Stay tuned for updates, or stop by the BAC meeting next Tuesday evening in the High School Cafeteria.

Remaining encouraged,

Chris Wendt

[sadpharmd]

Budget Discipline. A phrase (perhaps a bylaw?) we ought to familiarize ourselves with moving forward.

[lilly]

Feb 11, 2011 12:36:09 GMT -5 Chris_Wendt said:

[/li][li]The $2 Million, 2.87% increase is calculated on the 2010-11 “adjusted budget” which is higher than the original voter-approved budget, but, more importantly, is $4.65 Million higher than the ACTUAL spending for the 2009-10 school year. [/li][li]Worse yet, the preliminary 2011-12 budget total of $71.2 Million is $5.64 Million or 8.73% HIGHER than the 2009-10 ACTUAL spending of $64/5 Million![/list]
[/quote]

I think you should check with Dana D on that. I suspect the 2009/10 expenses in the spreadsheet are some sort of an encumbrances or expense td report bc the $69,182,285 voted in # has been raised since the vote to reflect donations, grants and such. It definitely didn't go down unless there is something very very big we don't know about.

I don't share your exuberance yet. Based on the draft presented (which will change), I have no way of detecting trends or priorities. There was no verbal/written explanation of strategic themes or goals other than each dept was told to cut/justify and no sub-totals were provided on the spreadsheet. So, while the 2.87% is much preferable to the +14% initial draft in the contingency year, we know nothing about how they got there without manually adding up 11 pages of single space 8 pt font line items. I spend enough time on this district without adding that to it.

For once in Wantagh, I would love to get the big picture goals & strategic plans from them with corresponding planned expenses. I have 20+ years of doing this for $100m+ clients - justifying with qualitative/quantitative accountability & planning how I'm going to spend their money. It drives me nuts that school districts don't do this.