At Board Work Session on $11M Underspend
A lively meeting and I will flesh this out later but here's what's happening:
- Director Blanford is not present (Director Peters is not but is on the phone) - It was stated that he wants the entire amount to roll over to 2017-2018 over the worry about various issues including the possible levy cliff
-There are a number of possible categories to spend those dollars. The Board and staff agreed on mitigation, SMART goals, Compliance, IB x 3 schools, reserves, middle school math adoption and Escrow (meaning don't decide on spending now but spend this year.)
- Board says yes to $2.3M for mitigation to schools. There was also an announcement that there are about 18 FTE teachers set-aside for possible split classroom mitigation. (There may be more money - they were talking about another $2M from another source.)
- Compliance - district staff estimates this at $1.9M (because regs are not yet written). A win would be for the amount to be lower than $1.9M.
- IB x 3 schools (Ingraham, RBHS and Chief Sealth) - $750K. (I note that there are several other sources in play for more resources for continuing IB. More to come.
- Director Blanford is not present (Director Peters is not but is on the phone) - It was stated that he wants the entire amount to roll over to 2017-2018 over the worry about various issues including the possible levy cliff
-There are a number of possible categories to spend those dollars. The Board and staff agreed on mitigation, SMART goals, Compliance, IB x 3 schools, reserves, middle school math adoption and Escrow (meaning don't decide on spending now but spend this year.)
- Board says yes to $2.3M for mitigation to schools. There was also an announcement that there are about 18 FTE teachers set-aside for possible split classroom mitigation. (There may be more money - they were talking about another $2M from another source.)
- Compliance - district staff estimates this at $1.9M (because regs are not yet written). A win would be for the amount to be lower than $1.9M.
- IB x 3 schools (Ingraham, RBHS and Chief Sealth) - $750K. (I note that there are several other sources in play for more resources for continuing IB. More to come.
Comments
I recall when Director Geary caught Dep Supt Nielsen in a recent quandary. She said that the Board had been told there was NO MONEY for a rewritten EEU agree,emt. Yet, when it came to discovering more opportunities for the City's experimental PreKs, suddenly Nielsen found "green money"!!! Watch the video. He visibly squirmed.
-WCJ
On the $11M, my understanding is that along with mitigation, compliance and IB funding for the three high schools, that the Board's suggestion is to put the remaining dollars (about $6M) into an "escrow" account with the promise those dollars will be used this budget year for some SMART goals and possibly middle school math adoption.
On recent discovery of funds, it's pretty common for public agencies to hold back spending until the end of the year since they can't typically get extra money for surprises during the year. Normally, there's a big "end of year" spending rush to spend out all of that money. It's possible that (a) Finance put the kibosh on end of year major spending or (b) Finance actually went through and checked whether departments were actually going to spend it. I don't know if either of those are true, but either would explain a sudden discovery of an underspend. Under either scenario, up until a month or two ago, the departments would have had money in their budget but would have planned on spending it, so the money wouldn't yet be an underspend.
Good question, Eric. I left the meeting at about the 3.5 hour mark (I couldn't sit there any longer.) But I think the staff realizes that the Board is very serious about their suggestions so I think the final outcome will be a mix of items.
My understanding is that Director Blanford (who was oddly not in attendance) wanted the entire amount in reserve.
The underspend comes from not filling/needing as many positions as they thought. And yet they have 18 FTE on-hold for the split classroom issue. It's hard to follow the bouncing ball sometimes.
18 photos from a recent visit.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/joebehr/albums/72157670451462955