Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Emergency status to be lifted today
Staff report
YOUNGSTOWN
After more than four years in fiscal emergency, the Youngstown school district will officially remove that tag today.
The school’s financial planning and supervision commission will meet at 11 a.m. at the school board offices on West Wood Street for the final time.
The committee will release the district from fiscal emergency and disband at today’s meeting.
Ohio Auditor Dave Yost is to attend to “announce the termination” of the district from being in fiscal emergency, according to a Monday statement from his office.
The school district has been in fiscal emergency since November 2006, with the commission appointed shortly thereafter.
Since then, the district has trimmed spending by $32 million, eliminating about 520 jobs over the last three years.
The district also had been placed in fiscal emergency before and released in 1999.
The state auditor’s office has conducted a detailed review of the district’s five-year financial forecast, examining its fiscal assumptions and projections.
The office has deemed that the district has met all requirements and will release it from emergency today.
District officials say they have been and will continue to adhere to the five-year forecast.
The forecast is a planning tool that’s required of all districts two times a year.
It’s designed to help school districts look forward, monitor revenue streams and expenses and identify if expenditures are expected to exceed revenue, officials have said.