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Schools

Lindbergh District Comes Up Nearly $100,000 Short But Looks For Offsets in Skipping New Purchases

The district's finance officer calls shortfall 'small' but school board warns against need to borrow from general fund for year's end.

A $99,814 loss to Lindbergh school district's operating budget was the bad news from Patrick Lanane, chief finance officer for the schools. He said it came after a mid-year budget adjustment. 

School district budgets are estimates at the beginning of a fiscal year, in June, and spending is adjusted once real numbers become available. Schools get funding, in part, through annual tax revenue. 

Lanane went on to reveal the good news at Tuesdays district school board meeting:  "It's really a very small change from the original."

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The largest declines in revenue will be $407,000 less in property taxes, $408,000 less in Early Childhood tuition and $240,000 less in state transportation aid, he said.

"We're really smacked because we rely on property taxes," Lanane said, pointing to the current budget crunch. Lindbergh started feeling the recession before other school districts in Missouri, Lanane said. Other districts may rely more on state funding and those districts will face  millions of dollars of lost revenue from state aid now.

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"Ten percent of our state aid will be cut, but we get so little from the state that 10 percent isn't much. We only get a single digit percent of our money from the state," according to District Superintendent Dr. Jim Simpson.

Lindbergh's own drop in revenue overall, Lanane said, was offset by a decline in expenditures.

"Operating expenditures in the revised budget have decreased $573,448, most of which is in salary and benefits. Non-operating expenditures decreased $215,000 as a result of no arbitrage on the Prop R 2006 bond issue," he said.

Additionally, the district's general fund balance will be at a low of $13.4 million by June 2011. The fund balance is a type of savings account that school districts use to cover emergencies and prevent cash flow problems.

"It's going to push us very close to the borrowing point," Lanane said. "We're that close." Typically school districts are required, by law, to keep a certain amount in reserve in order to maintain a certain standing.

The school board warned Lanane to watch purchase orders and the district's cash flow to try to avoid the need to borrow money.

Lanane seemed to concur.

"If it hasn't been purchased by this time in the year, maybe they don't need it,"  Lanane said, about potential orders. He said he will question any  purchase orders made after winter break to make sure the expense is truly needed.

"If we can save that $100,000 maybe that's money we don't have to borrow," said board member Larry McIntosh.



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