Budget Surplus of $473,000 Enables East Windsor School District to Minimize Reductions

A $473,000 surplus in the East Windsor school district’s 2012-13 budget will mean that projected cuts won’t be as dire, according to Superintendent of Schools Dr. Theresa Kane.

In a telephone interview Tuesday, Kane said that the district received $162,000 more in the special education excess cost grant - a state reimbursement mechanism - than was originally budgeted. The school district also received $30,000 more from the Open Choice grant, and another $199,000 came as a result of a surplus in retiree “bill back” reimbursements, Kane said.

The hard freeze on spending also netted the district another $82,000, according to Kane.

In years past, the school district would return surpluses to the town. This year, however, Kane said that the plan was to spend the $473,000 in the current fiscal year - 2012-13 - on supplies. The money budgeted in the $21.04 million budget for 2013-14 for supplies will be applied to keeping staff reductions at a minimum, Kane said.

Except in limited circumstances, school districts by law are not allowed to roll over excess funds from one budget year to the next.

“We are reinstating $473,000 into the budget,” Kane said.

Still, Kane presented a list of 19 recommendations to cut to make up for $128,000 in savings.

Included in the recommendations were the following:

• Eliminating a third- and fourth-grade teaching position;

• Eliminating the East Windsor High School foods teaching position;

• Eliminating the business manager position;

• Reducing the RAMP and ELE teaching positions to half-time;

• Reducing a secretarial position to .9 FTE; and

• Eliminating 3 summer custodial positions.

After a lengthy discussion at a special meeting on Monday evening, the Board of Education ultimately adopted Kane’s recommendations in a 5-4 vote.

“Hard decisions had to be made,” Kane said.

Still, the cuts weren’t nearly as deep as originally thought.

“It’s wonderful,” Kane said. “I’m very proud were able to preserve services for the kids.”

Kane acknowledged that a lively discussion took place over how there could be a $473,000 surplus.

Kane said that East Windsor has realized a surplus resulting from the excess cost grant going back 10 years.

“This is nothing new,” she said. “It’s not because of an oversight. It’s because of the structure of the ECG. We have 10 years’ history of documents to support that.”

Kane noted that before she started in East Windsor, the school district did not have revenue accounts for the ECG. Previously, they were just netted out in the books, Kane said.

An auditor said that the town and the school district had to set up revenue accounts, which should enable the school district to better track money coming in.

“I’m very pleased with the progress we’ve made,” she said.

Kane said that she was not “crying wolf” when she said that cuts would be severe. She said that she never spoke of any cuts until the second budget referendum failed to pass.

“Look at the date when I first talked about reductions,” she said. “There’s nothing hidden here.”

Kane said she would like to schedule a session with the Board of Finance as to how a school budget works; school budgets tend to be far more volatile than town budgets, which is why they are able to move funds from one account to another more freely than towns.