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Schools still face financial challenges
By Denise Dick
youngstowN
Even though the city school district’s loss of state money isn’t as large as what was expected a couple of months ago, the school board president said financial challenges remain.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” said Lock P. Beachum Sr., Youngstown city school board president.
The board decided late last year to place a replacement levy on the March ballot — seeking less millage than the levy that expires this year. But in February, the board voted to remove the replacement levy. That happened after the enrollment number was about 400 students lower than what was anticipated, meaning the money from the state was lower as well, by about $4 million. The replacement wouldn’t have covered such a big money gap, school officials reasoned at the time.
Earlier this month, though, district officials announced that the loss was only about $1 million.
“I don’t know what all is to blame for the initial problem,” said William Johnson, district treasurer. “A number of things were not meshing up. The counts come from our data department. We’ve gotten new software this year, and I don’t know if that had something to do with it.”
The school district’s Academic Distress Commission earlier this month placed Johnson on paid administrative leave through July 31 when his contract expires. Johnson previously had announced his plans to retire on that date.
An interim treasurer is to be appointed, and a national search commenced to find Johnson’s replacement.
The commission didn’t list a reason for Johnson’s leave, but at the meeting where the panel took the action, much discussion centered on the changing enrollment count and corresponding fluctuation in money anticipated from the state.
Beachum still expects the school board to place a levy before voters in November and hopes it can be for less millage than the levy passed in 2008.
Without some amount of levy money, the district could slip back into fiscal emergency within a few years, he said. That’s happened once already.
In 1999, the district was released from fiscal emergency after three years of state control, only to slip back in seven years later. The most recent fiscal emergency, declared in 2006, ended in March 2011.
With retirements, reductions in force and some job eliminations, the district already has cut $4.1 million, but Beachum said the board must continue to look for ways to trim expenses without harming academics.
The amount of money from the state is based on total enrollment, or the number of students who live within the district, including those attending other schools or districts through open enrollment, vouchers or community schools; and on a student count conducted the first week in October.
Throughout the remainder of the school year, though, that number can change. Students may live in one district but attend another, or move from one district to another, or report they live in one district when in reality they live in a different one. All of those discrepancies get reconciled throughout the year.
“When you say October count, you think, ‘Well, I learned how to count in kindergarten,’ but it’s not that simple,” Johnson had said before he was placed on leave. “It’s one of the most intricate, quirky, complicated things.”
Total enrollment actually drives the state revenue received by school districts. The money then is transferred out based on the number of students who attend private schools using vouchers, community schools or exercise open enrollment to go to another school district.
After transfers, then, the Youngstown schools’ projected loss now stands at $1 million.
Johnson based the district’s five-year forecast on projected student counts.
There’s been wide fluctuation during the past few years.
For fiscal year 2009, the total enrollment was 10,618, which grew to 10,845 in FY10. In FY11, it dropped again to 10,654.
It was difficult to predict that number for FY12, Johnson said, because recent years had seen both increases and decreases.
“When the state projected it, it was 10,500,” he said. “I thought that was pretty reasonable.”
But when the district got its report in March, the total enrollment was 9,838.
“It was way, way down,” Johnson said.
Last month, total enrollment increased to 10,086.
Annual base revenue from the state, before deductions, has varied from $74.8 million in late March, to $76.7 million in April and $77.4 million in early May. Another report from the state is expected later this month.
“It’s sort of jumping all over the place,” Johnson said.
Patrick Gallaway, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education, said other districts may be struggling with changing numbers as well.
“We are implementing a new Education Management Information System ...,” he said in an email. “It is designed to more effectively track students, so we know when students have left a district, where they have resurfaced, etc.”
The state has granted several extensions to school districts involving reporting and verifying the accuracy from the October count, he said. In past years, the process is complete at the end of February. This year, it was extended until mid-May, the spokesman said in the email.
“So, I think it is safe to say that other districts are also working though the issue as well,” Gallaway said.