Patricia Roy
REGION — It is embarrassing to say that the Wachusett Regional School District overspent its fiscal 2022 budget by $1.6 million, school superintendent Dr. James Reilly told the school committee at its Aug. 15 meeting.
The salary line was overdrawn by $575,000, and the operations and maintenance line was overdrawn by $475,000.
That is going to lead to a need for very closely monitored budgets beginning immediately, for the current fiscal year, and in building next year’s budget, said Reilly.
The budget for the five-town district has undergone some challenges in the past couple of years, and this year will be no different, he added.
The overspend means that reserve funding sources like the Circuit Breaker and School Choice accounts were severely spent down and can offer no relief for any unanticipated expenditures, such as an increased need for substitute teachers.
On June 30, 2021, the Circuit Breaker account was at $1,769,000. By June 30, 2023, the end of this fiscal year, the balance will be down to $160,600, Reilly said in a presentation made to the committee.
Further compounding the issue, the School Choice account stood at $680,400 in June 2021 and is at $180,200 just two years later. The district has not participated in school choice for several years.
“The means we’ve used to balance our budget the past few years won’t be available to us in the current fiscal year,” Reilly said.
It also doesn’t address the operating budget the district is using now, he said.
“I’ll be honest, I have concerns about how this budget was built,” he said.
As an example, he noted that the salary line for the current school year was based on level staffing.
There will not be the option of adding positions and being able to finance them through the current budget, he said, adding, “That can be a hardship when there are items that come to our attention that maybe we didn’t anticipate.”
The budget was developed by adding 3.01 percent to the salary line of the previous year. Since that number was already overdrawn, the base number officials used or multiplied was not accurate.
At times, steps and lane changes (salary increases merited by more educational coursework) were not accounted for in the figures developed for the budget.
“I will share with you that I have fear that the numbers we’ve arrived at may not even support out staffing for this year,” Reilly said. “So we may have some hard choices to make to maintain level staffing.”
The district has to be very aware of the cost for substitute teachers. Last year, the substitute costs were double the forecast number. Another COVID-19 incident could again boost that cost.
It is likely the district will do line transfers to support specific items, possibly the salary line, he said.
Developing a budget for fiscal 2024 will require a more accurate approach than past practice in order to run the district ‘the way we want to,’ said Reilly.
The salary line for this school year is $68,605,250. The district’s business office is checking that for accuracy, especially around changes concerning steps and lanes.
Building the fiscal 2024 budget will require transparency and caution, Reilly said.
