Breaking Down the School Budget: Revenue

In its first iteration, that the must balance by late March.

Superintendent Bruce Watson said the district's ultimate goal is to retain all existing personnel and programs, while also adding staff to replace positions that were lost due to state aid cuts a couple years back.

So where is the money to do all that coming from?

Watson carefully broke down the revenue side of the budget, line item by line item, during his presentation Thursday.

Here Patch helps unpack it.

Tax Revenue

* = column that is summed to reach 'Balance'

($8,080,861)                                

Definitions:

2011-2012 Tax Levy -- Amount of tax money from residents coming in to support the public school system for this school year.

Allowable Levy Income (2% Cap) – By law, the ceiling on annual tax increases is 2 percent. If towns and schools starved of revenue want to raise taxes higher, they must get permission from a majority of local voters.

2012-2013 Tax Levy – The maximum amount of money in taxes the school district can request at this point. The first draf of the budget was built at the 2 percent cap.

Budget Book Today (General Expenses) – A book put together by the district with what it believes its needs are going forward for 2012-2013. It represents the expense side of the budget.

Additional Revenue     

* = column that is summed to reach 'Balance'                                   

$1,892,985

Definitions:

State Aid Estimate: Estimated amount of state education funding. "Almost 3 years ago, that was about $5.2 million. If we had $5.2 million there, we'd be in very good shape." - Bruce Watson

Special State Aid Payment: Additional state education funding provided at the end of last school year. Districts had the option of applying it to last year's budget as found money or carrying it over to this year. Fair Lawn chose to carry over the money. "The revenue stream in the state of New Jersey, I'm assuming, was a little better than they thought, so they gave all the schools some additional state aid." - Bruce Watson

Extraordinary Aid Estimate: State money provided to the district for children with signifncant special needs. Districts apply to the state government to be reimbursed for their special needs education costs and receive some amount back. "This coming year we should get back about $1 million...We feel pretty confident that that’s going to come through." - Bruce Watson

Tuition: Students who live outside of Fair Lawn but come to Fair Lawn under the approval of the board of education must pay tuition. Fair Lawn charges the student's home district for the cost to educate them. Special education students make up the majority of these children coming from out-of-district.

Transportation Fees: The district charges a fee for children who want to be transported across town via bus -- often for children who would otherwise have to cross dangerous intersections.  “We have a number of routes all over the district. We’ll have a bus that transports some Special Ed students from one side of town to a particular program in a school and it runs out at a certain time before school. When that bus returns back, I don’t want to return it empty if I don’t have to. So what we’ll do is we’ll return it to people who sign on, pay a fee for a year, we’ll pick those children up and drop them at the school they have to go to.” - Bruce Watson

Capital Reserve Interest:  Interest earned on money stored in a capital reserve account that accumulates over years. It must be used for capital improvements. 

Capital Reserve Withdrawal: Withdrawal of money stored in a capital reserve account. It must be used for capital purchases or capital improvements. "We don’t want to let the buildings go, and right now we’re in pretty good shape and we want to keep them up." -Bruce Watson

Summer School: Tuition paid by students who attend Fair Lawn's summer school program. For the first time this year, student's from other districts can attend Fair Lawn's summer school program. Out-of-district students are charged a higher tuition to attend.

Special Education Medicaid Initiative: The school district can recover a portion of costs from the federal government for certain Medicaid-covered services or activities provided to Medicaid-eligible students enrolled in the school district.

Other Revenue (Community School): A majority of this money is taken in from the Community School. Any dollar taken from the Community School goes back into it. "If you look at the expense side of our budget, you will see that number is also there, so it’s a dollar in, a dollar out for the programs that we run." - Bruce Watson

Miscellaneous Revenue and Interest: Most of this money comes from an investment program. Every dollar that comes into the school district gets invested. The types of investments schools can make are scipted by law and not considered inherently risky. "About six years ago this number [$195,500] was about $680,000 and we had a much smaller budget, so you can see where we are in the economy." - Bruce Watson

Education Job Fund Aid: A federal program that provided the district with a one-time allocation of funds last year for the express purpose of supporting job hiring. "We have to absorb that or cut those jobs because we're not getting that money again." - Bruce Watson

Fund Balance

* = column that is summed to reach 'Balance'

Definitions:

Fund Balance Appropriation: Not technically a revenue. It's an appropriation but it's counted toward the revenue. It essentially amounts to the money taken out of the board's surplus and used toward the budget.

"The board’s bank account ended up with about $1.6 million and we’re going very aggressive because we want to maintain the school budget the best we can. We don’t want to start cutting jobs all over the place if we don’t have to or programs. So we’re going to ask the board to appropriate $1.1M." - Bruce Watson