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Liberty district takes back fiscal control
LIBERTY
The Liberty School District is now free to govern its own fiscal operations.
The district has a five-year financial forecast that’s deficit-free. So at a meeting Monday afternoon at Liberty High School, a state oversight commission that had governed the district’s finances for three years voted to dissolve itself.
“It was a long battle, and there were lives and livelihoods affected, and we were in a dire financial situation,” said Schools Superintendent Stan Watson.
The district went into fiscal emergency in May 2011, shortly after state auditors said its books were unauditable and its treasurer resigned.
It had a $1.9 million deficit. Two conversion schools were operating in the district, and the school board had believed those schools were going to bring in additional per-pupil dollars from the state. They did not. The district ended ties with the schools, but it was too late — the anticipated windfall from them was not coming.
Watson, who became superintendent in 2010, said he was mindful of two groups of people through the whole process of fiscal emergency.
“Students and taxpayers,” he said. “We did it without increasing taxes, which is rare, and I feel very good about that.”
Paul Marshall, who chaired Liberty’s state oversight commission as a representative for the Ohio Department of Education, said cutting staff and switching from self-insurance to an insurance consortium are what contributed most to the district’s balanced five-year forecast.
“We pushed the district real hard to get away from being self-insured,” Marshall said, adding that with self-insurance, the district had to have “a big pot of money” in reserve.
Board member Diana DeVito said she believes self-insurance was not a bad move because it saved money, crediting former board member Jeff Grinstein with steering the district toward it in the first place.
“No matter what the commission says, we were able to pay off $958,000 to the state solvency fund,” said DeVito, who was board president at the time.
“It was a wonderful day,” she said, “to get out of that kind of a mess in three and a half years, with no additional tax burden on the citizens of Liberty, and I want to emphasize the sacrifice.
“Twenty-two people lost their jobs flat out,” she continued. “Fourteen went from full to part time because we had $4 million we had to cut.”
“I give a lot of kudos to Mr. Watson, for sure,” she said, “and to Mrs. [treasurer Lori] Simeone — we’re very, very fortunate to have her.”
“It was a lot of hard work by a lot of people,” Marshall said, also crediting Watson, Simeone and the commission members.
Watson said that although Monday was a day for good news, it won’t be back to business as usual in the district.
“You always have to be very careful,” he said. “If storm clouds are on the horizon, there’s a storm coming. Make sure you see it.”