Stephens Co. Schools FY16 Budget To Be Ready Next Month

The Stephens County Board of Education will not have a budget approved for Fiscal Year 2016 by June 30.

At Thursday’s Stephens County Board of Education work session, Stephens County School Superintendent Bryan Dorsey updated the board on the Fiscal Year 2016 budget process.

Dorsey said that a number of factors have led to the need to push completing a budget for Fiscal Year 2016 into the month of July.

“With two board members out this week, two board members out next week, with a new finance director, and us wanting to make sure we have the most accurate numbers possible, we are delaying requesting any final budget approval until July,” said Dorsey.

Dorsey said he hopes to have a tentative budget ready to go and present to the board perhaps as early as the second week of July.

Until the budget is approved, the school board will then have to approve monthly spending resolutions.

School board members are expected to approve a July spending resolution at its meeting on Tuesday night.

The Board of Education used spending resolutions in this current fiscal year until the budget was ready also as a Fiscal Year 2015 budget was not approved until September 2015.

Work has begun on a tentative budget, according to Dorsey.

He said that while it is early in the process, he feels good about how the Fiscal Year 2016 budget is starting to come together.

“We are absolutely seeing the savings that we had been projecting,” said Dorsey. “We think with this re-structuring, we are seeing substantial savings and we feel good about our rough draft and how we are going to be looking for the future.”

Also on Thursday, the Board of Education received the monthly financial report for Fiscal Year 2015 through May.

With 91.67 percent of the fiscal year complete, the Stephens County school system has spent 90 percent of budgeted expenditures.

Dorsey said that staff has done an amazing job coming together and working hard to save every dollar possible in this fiscal year.

“I think of people, like in our maintenance department where they are almost a half million dollars under budget, which is a big deal,” said Dorsey. “That is just an example of how our staff is pulling together.”

Currently, the school system has an excess of revenue over expenditure of more than $3.6 million. However, once the school system factors in a Tax Anticipation Note payoff of over $4.7 million, it creates a deficit of just over $1 million as of May 31.