By Heather Graves
Staff Writer
GREEN BAY – It took the Green Bay School Board less than 2 minutes to approve the 2021-22 budget in a 5-0 vote at a special meeting Monday, Oct. 25.
Board members Brenda Warren and Nancy Welch were excused for the meeting.
Prior to the vote, Chief Financial Officer Angela Roble walked the board through a handful of changes to the final budget proposal, which she credited to finalized numbers received by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI).
She said the final version shows a balanced budget for 2021-22 of approximately $292.9 million, which is an increase of about 1.2% from $289.3 million in 2020-21.
The district is projected to receive $174.6 million in general state aid, an increase from the previous year’s $166.8 million.
It includes a tax rate of $9.03 per $1,000 of property, which is down 76 cents from last year’s $9.79.
“I think the most important thing to note is the mill rate, which you will be voting on tonight along with the adoption of the budget, has not changed,” she said. “So, it has stayed at $9.03 and that is what was proposed on Oct. 11.”
The budget includes $29.49 million for debt service, an increase of nearly $8.5 million from last year.
The proposed budget calls for the transfer of $33.4 million from the general fund (Fund 10) to the special education fund (Fund 27) – an increase of $4.6 million from last year.
Roble said enrollment in the special education program increased by about 80 students to 3,086.
She said a majority of the $52.9 million in anticipated revenues for special education is supported by a fund transfer from general education.
Roble said it’s tough to estimate private school voucher expenditures during budget preparations.
“The reason I say that is because we don’t get a lot of information on this number from DPI until Oct. 15,” she said. “As you can see, as presented on Oct. 11, it was at $9.2 million, and it actually came in at $8.8 million, so we had to decrease that voucher expenditure number by about $374,000. The payments to other Wisconsin districts, that is our open enrollment out. So, that increased as well by about $144,000 from that preliminary proposed number.”
That brings the total amount Green Bay pays for open enrollment out students leaving the district to $18.3 million.
The payments to independent charter schools line item, Roble said, is new for the district this year.
“There was a new charter school that was opened in the Howard-Suamico area, I believe, and we had 37 students that open enrolled out and chose to attend,” she said. “We have to show this, by DPI (rules), separately, treated the same as open enrollment out kids going out to public schools. It is just shown on a separate line item. This is new for us, that is why you see a zero in the presented budget, because we weren’t aware of this until Oct. 15 when we got the final revenue limit worksheet. Those 37 kids, that is the $340,000 increase in expenditures, so we had to add that into the budget this year that we weren’t aware of.”
Trustee Andrew Becker questioned whether the new charter school “had to accept all students like we accept all students.”
Roble said she wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know the rules surrounding that independent charter school,” she said. “All I am aware of is that we do have to pay for each student that attends just like we do for all the other open enrollment out students.”
Another highlight of the budget includes nearly $12.5 million in Coronavirus Act, Relief and Economic Security funds.
“We have infused about $12.5 million into our budget this year, for right now, obviously that is an estimate from what we know what is coming for 2021-22,” Roble said. “In the revenues we’ve got $12.5 million in Fund 10, but that’s also offset by $12.5 million in expenditures. Same as any grant that we are accounting for, they are always offset and they are kind of a wash in Fund 10.”