$650K School Budget Gap Plugged, No Layoffs, Cherry Hill Officials Say

A week after saying a six-figure budget deficit could make staff cuts a possibility, Cherry Hill school administrators say they’ve found a way to close the gap without costing any jobs next year.

With a projected $650,000 more in expenses than revenue in the 2013-2014 budget—up slightly from what school officials projected a week ago—a budget freeze and an increased carryover from the current-year budget should be enough to make staff or program cuts unnecessary, said Jim Devereaux, the district’s assistant superintendent for business.

Instead of moving over $4.1 million from this year’s budget, the district will bump that to $4.8 million, Devereaux said—more than planned, but still less than previous years, when the district carried over as much as $8 million year-to-year.

That increase is coming about because of the lockdown on the current-year budget, and isn’t guaranteed, Devereaux said.

“With the implementation of a hard budget freeze, we are relatively confident…we’ll end the year in good enough shape to bring over the $650,000,” he said.

For that reason, the district’s hedging elsewhere, putting a hold on $600,000 worth of current-year capital projects until June, the end of the fiscal year, to have a second line of defense, should the budget freeze not be enough to free up enough to plug the gap in next year’s budget, Devereaux said.

“It does at least give us an extra layer of insurance, in case we encounter anything unforeseen,” he said.

While the budget freeze will cut down on what the district spends, Devereaux cautioned it doesn’t mean dire measures are being put in place—buildings will still get maintained and students and teachers will still have supplies for classes.

“If they need it to teach…they can still buy it,” he said. “There’ll still be plenty of paper and pencils across the district.”

Beyond the current year, Superintendent Maureen Reusche said administrators are looking at ways to develop new sources of revenue for the district and also considering how to handle resignations and retirements—not necessarily backfilling positions, but possibly shifting the workload around without adding the expense of salary and benefits.

“We’re cognizant of the 2-percent cap and the limitations it places on us,” she said, referring to the state-mandated cap on the tax levy increase each year.

While the budget’s biggest problem has been solves, school officials cautioned it’s not yet final, and there are still question marks—the biggest being state aid, which won’t be announced until after the governor’s budget address at the end of the month.

Right now, the district’s budget plans on state aid being flat compared to last year, Reusche said, but there are worries it could be bad news come Feb. 28.

“Right now, quite frankly, what we have been trying to do is make contacts to ensure that state aid will not be cut,” she said. “That is the concern.”

If the district gets especially bad news on state aid, staff and program cuts could be back on the table to balance next year's budget, Reusche said.

Even with state aid figures still murky, the school board will have a mostly final budget to vote on at its Feb. 26 meeting, Devereaux said, and a planned Feb. 19 budget meeting has been canceled.

Depending on what funding comes in from the state after the governor’s budget address, the school board may have to reconvene in the first week of March to consider an amended version, Devereaux said.