Columbia Public Schools to dip into reserve funds

Columbia Public Schools will have to use more than $6 million dollars from reserve funds to meet its projected expenditures for the 2006-07 school year budget, according to a presentation at Monday’s school board meeting.

Superintendent Phyllis Chase presented the report, which shows that the district will be running on a deficit budget for the second consecutive year. New revenue for the district, which will come almost entirely from local sources, adds up to $4.3 million. This figure falls short of the district’s projected expenditures of $11 million. The disparity between the numbers, due to a lack of state and federal funding, will be supplemented by $6.6 million dollars from district reserves.

Chase said that even if no money had been added to raise teachers’ salaries, which the board recently approved, the district would still “be $4.6 million in the red” because of the low level of revenue the district receives from the state.

Currently, the district has almost 21 percent of its 2006-07 budget in reserve funds. By applying reserve funds toward next year’s budget, however, future reserves to be used for teachers and operating funds will decrease to a little less than 16 percent of the 2007-08 budget.

Chase said that specifics in the budget would be reviewed by the board later, and that this first review of the budget serves only to reveal the “big picture.”

The board also heard a proposal from the Extra-Duty Stipend Committee, recommending a pay raise to district teachers working in supervisory, coaching and club sponsorship positions. Mary Laffey, district assistant superintendent for human resources and chair of the committee, presented the proposal to the board, which asked for more than $250,000 to fund the increase.

Laffey also presented a recommendation to increase substitute teacher pay.

Both recommendations are currently included in the new budget proposal. They will be reviewed and could be added as action items — meaning that the board would vote on them — at the June meeting.