School District Ends year with Substantial Surplus

The Portsmouth School District ended the fiscal year with a $425,000 surplus thanks a few budgeted line items not being fully spent and unexpected cost savings in health insurance, unemployment and special education and tuition costs.

The surplus is based on preliminary, unaudited numbers and might change though school Finance Director Christopher L. DiIuro said he didn’t expect any major deviations from the numbers he presented to the School Committee last month.

Even though the school district ended the fiscal year with $501,000 less in revenue than they expected, nearly $925,000 in savings was realized over the course of the year.

DiIuro said the district the professional development and conference budget was under by $150,000; $121,000 was saved in lower-than-expected FICA and unemployment costs, transportation landed $58,000 below estimates and the biggest savings — $247,000 — came from lower special education tuition costs after a number of students moved out of district.

School Committee member Emily Copeland commended the administration for achieving the surplus and noted that the committee had asked for increased revenue sources as part of the district’s Strategic Plan. She noted that the district did raise the facilities rental rate, which resulted in an increase of revenues by 439 percent alone.

The projected fund balance is now $3.4 million.

The district started the fiscal year with a fund balance of $3.98 million. It also had a capital project fund balance of just under $1.5 million. After transferring about $1 million to the capital project fund from the general fund, they spent about $1.77 million on the T3 project.

That leaves the capital project at about $1.3 million.

Going foward, DiIuro is projecting the district will start the fiscal year with budget deficit of $248,000 in fiscal 2015, which means they will have to tap into the general fund surplus to balance the books.

The School Committee has recently approved the use of $230,000 in capital budget funds for IT expenditures and they anticipate spending $692,000 on fire code repairs at Hathaway School and another $695,000 for completing the T3 project. The district is expecting to get $285,000 from the town for impact fees proposed by former School Committee Chairman David Croston last October, which will help offset costs.

In the end, DiIuro is projecting the district end fiscal 2015, assuming there are no other variables, with a overall surplus in the general fund of $2.8 million and a little less than $200,000 in capital funds.