Latest UDSD Draft Budget Shows $565K Deficit

The Upper Dublin School District has a half million-dollar budget gap to close for 2012-13, after district administrators announced revised revenue estimates at a Board of School Directors meeting Monday night.

However, the deficit amounts to less than one percent of the district's $85 million budget and officials anticipate closing the gap without reductions in staffing or major cuts to programs.

In a presentation to the board, district business administrator Brenda Jones Bray explained that several revenue items had been revised from . The biggest reduction came in reimbursement from Holy Family Institute, which is supposed to be a budget neutral item for the district. Upper Dublin in required by the state to spend approximately $28,000 per student for ninety students to attend the school, and is supposed to receive dollar for dollar reimbursement from the School District of Philadelphia, according to superintendent Michael Pladus.

However, that process has become increasingly difficult and the district has revised its numbers to show a $332,692 decrease in revenues.

"We worked with the assumption that it would be cost neutral," Bray said. "Unfortunately, as time passed between the reimbursement from Philadelphia and some of the paper problems that we have with students, cost neutral is too optimistic of an assumption moving forward."

The district also faces losses in local and state revenues.

As, the district revised its maximum potential tax increase for 2012-13 from 4.47 to 4.25 percent in January, after the state changed its Act 1 formulas. This led to an additional decrease of $135,012 in the revenue side of the budget, Bray said.

In addition, decreases in estimates of $72,651 for transfer taxes and $50,363 in state general education funding add up to an overall revision of $590,718 in lower revenue for 2012-13.

The decrease poses some cause for concern, as the district previously estimated it would have only $25,000 in reserve for 2012-13, after using roughly $3 million of its funds to balance expenditures. Given the revised estimates, the district currently faces a gap of approximately $565,000 to close before the final submission of the budget in late spring.

However, Bray told Patch that school districts often budget close to neutral, and that having to rebalance the budget throughout the process is a common occurrence.

"It's become even more common as we have to budget closer under Act 1 guidelines," said Bray. "If the gap existed at the end of the discussion of expenditures, it would be a problem."

To close the gap, Bray said the district has a number of options to consider. The gap currently amounts to 0.7 percent of Upper Dublin's $85,681,402 in expenditures.

"We're talking about refunding bonds to realize savings, and reviewing some of our general obligations," Bray said.

In her presentation, Bray mentioned potential savings from and a second attempt at joining a transportation consortium. Bray also said the district is up for a complete review of expenditures.

"We need to refine expenditures by going over the entire budget, which we'll start doing publicly at the end of March," Bray said.

The district is planning a series of public budget meetings, the first of which is scheduled for March 26, 2012.