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With finances stable, Youngstown schools plan reduced levy for ballot
YOUNGSTOWN
Youngstown city schools are financially stable and could stay that way for the next five years if the renewal and reduction of a four-year, 9.5-mill levy is approved by voters in the March primary election.
The board of education wants to replace the four-year levy, which generates about $5.3 million a year, with a levy that would produce about $3.5 million annually.
“We will continue to take steps internally to cut costs without touching academics. But if the levy doesn’t pass, the district will probably go into fiscal watch by the 2013-2014 school year,” said schools Superintendent Connie Hathorn, speaking Friday after a meeting of the board of education’s finance committee.
The meeting was called by board President Lock P. Beachum Sr. to have Treasurer William Johnson recap finances of the 2010-11 school year and review current school-year finances.
During the past four years, the school district cut $35 million and 520 jobs and is out of fiscal emergency.
Total expenditures for fiscal year 2011 (July 1, 2010-June 30, 2011) totaled $106.9 million, compared with $117.4 million in fiscal year 2009 and a projected $105.7 million for this fiscal year, July 1, 2011-June 30, 2012, said Johnson.
Employee salaries and fringe benefits totaled $61.6 million for fiscal 2011 and are expected to be the same for this school year, he said.
Revenue for fiscal 2011 included $19.4 million from real-estate taxes, $73 million from the state, and the remainder from a variety of other sources, including grants.
“The budget is always challenging when you don’t have money. You have to be resourceful,” Hathorn said. “We will re-evaluate all programs that are paid for out of the general fund, and if they are not working, they will be eliminated.”
“We also to look for new sources of revenue, and we need to get back the hundreds of students — and the state funding that goes with them — that have been lost to private schools,” he added.
“Things are going to stay the same in Columbus. They are trying to run public schools out of business. Even President Obama is not that uptight about [what’s happening] to public schools,” Beachum said.
“We have to do the best we can with what we have. We have to make this school district attractive so kids will want to come back to it,” he said.
In another matter, Hathorn confirmed that Chaney High School Principal Richard Gozer resigned his position.
In a letter to the board, Gozer, who came to Youngstown City Schools in August 2011, said he was leaving for “family and health reasons.” Gozer was formerly high school principal for Campbell schools, Hathhorn said.
The superintendent said Artemus Scissum will be interim principal at Chaney until a permanent replacement is found.