Schools approve $13.4 mil budget

By BEN HOCKING
Reporter

During the July 21 Glenrock School Board meeting, the board unanimously approved a $13,422,934 2010-11 school year budget.

The general fund is budgeted at $10,281,512, down approximately $200,000 from last year. However, last year the district ended up spending more than $400,000 less than it expected.

The budget includes a .25 percent increase in instruction spending, a 2.69 percent increase in instructional support and a 7.84 percent increase in general support expenditures. The district is carrying over approximately $1.1 million in cash.

The Wyoming funding model allots money to school districts based on how many students are enrolled in the district.

“For every student who leaves the Glenrock school district we lose around $15,000 dollars in funds,” Glenrock School District Business Manager Lynne Short said. “We don’t have any control over the money that comes in.”

The cost of health insurance for school district employees was raised to $175 a month for families and $58 a month for single employee coverage.

The school district is also due to get a one-time payment of $491,000 to make up for money that wasn’t received in June from the county. Short said that the school district is only allowed to put 15 percent of those funds into savings and plans to spend it on something that won’t cost more money in future years.

“When we get one-time money, we aren’t going to put that to a long-term budget commitment,” she said.

Included in the newly released budget are plans to pay the additional 1.43 percent of the state retirement contribution. As employers, they are required to pay 1.44 percent of the 2.87 increase, Short said that this will cost the school district $75,000 this year, but will not necessarily be paid when next year’s budget is figured out.

“Once I had figured the budget, I recommended that we pay this year’s (retirement contribution),” she said. “Next year, the employee might have to pick up (the difference).”

A way that the school district has been able to save money in the past has been re-evaluting whether or not they need to hire new staff when an employee resigns or retires. Short said that sometimes positions will be consolidated in order to save money in the budget.

“Every time a new vacancy occurs, we see if that position is really needed,” said Short. “We have made an effort not to cut staff with reduced funding. We have never fired someone due to budget cuts.”

This is part of the July 29, 2010 online edition of The Glenrock Independent.

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