Greenville County School District To Dip Into Reserve Fund

More than two months after the Greenville County School Board approved a budget for the next year, trustees voted this week to dip into its reserve fund to help make up for a shortfall after the state's House of Representatives cut a large chunk of Greenville County's expected allotment.  

The Senate's approved version of the state budget was the basis for the district's own budgeting process this summer, but the House's budget reduced funding to the county by some $2.6 million in funds that had been allotted just a year ago. 

As a result, the district addressed the problem by using a combination of $1.6 million from the reserve fund, moving expenses from the general fund to state funding for special education to the tune of $1.1 million and factoring in lower-than-expected liability insurance costs. 

"Hold Harmless" money, distributed to districts adversely effected by the state's formulary change to how it calculates each district's taxpaying ability (which consequently affects how much money the districts get from the state), was not funded for the 2012-13 fiscal year, meaning Greenville County School District officials had to devise a way to make up for the $2.6 million it had been counting on from the state when it wrote its budgets. 

Oby Lyles, spokesman for the district, said that the method used to input assessed value on homes for the purpose of taxation resulted in those values going up, which means the state's allotment to the district went down, and in fact the revenue the state decided to distribute last year was not approved by the Senate at all. 

In June, trustees voted to increase the property tax rate by 6.1 mills, as opposed to the 7.5 mills approved upon the budget's first reading. That budget passed in a 6 to 4 vote.