Niles High School District 219 Approves Budget

The school board approved a $131.2 million spending plan for the 2011-2012 school year, up 6.86 from what the district spent last year.

The budget calls for $144.2 million in revenue, 94 percent of it from local sources, primarily property taxes. The revenue projection is up 9.08 percent from what the district received last year, according to the executive summary supplied by Paul O’Malley, assistant superintendent for business services, and Susan Husselbee, the district’s director of fiscal services.

The school board approved the budget unanimously after a public hearing at which nobody spoke.

Earlier:

It varies slightly from the tentative budget that was put on public display in July, with total projected revenue rising about $427,000. Projected expenses, meanwhile, decreased by $1.6 million.

'We're not going to spent it all anyway'

While he voted in favor of it, school board president Robert Silverman said he still believes the projected expenditures in the budget are too high.

The district has come in under budget on spending every year for years, he said, ending up about $6.5 million under budget last year. When he asks why this year’s projected spending is higher in many areas than last year’s actual spending, “the response is, ‘We’re not going to spend all the money in the budget anyway,’” he said. “Then why have that money in the budget in the first place? It gives us a false sense of where the numbers are.”

Some want per-pupil spending reduced

The numbers are important to Silverman and other board members because they would like to keep increases in the district’s operating expenditure per pupil as low as possible, or even reduce its per-pupil spending.

According to the last Illinois state school report card figures, District 219 had the second highest per-pupil expenditures in the state among high school districts, at $21,990 in the 2008-2009 school year, and that number has continued to rise. According to the budget approved last night, the projected per-pupil spending for the 2011-2012  school year will be $23,956, up 1.75 percent from what was budgeted last year and up more than 5 percent from the latest figures on what was actually spent last year. The budget-to-budget increase is the lowest it has been in years, Husselbee said.

Silverman commended administrators for keeping the increase in per-pupil spending small, especially while the district has increased opportunities for students. But he said he would rather see a budget that says what district administrators really think the district will spend, with no extra cushions.

“If we need to spend under the budget to achieve our goals, why not just budget less?” he asked.

District 219 Superintendent Nanciann Gatta reminded board members and residents that the budget is available on the district’s website, along with lots of other information. One of the newest items is “Your Tax Calculator,” which allows District 219 residents to enter how much they paid in taxes to the school district and find out how much of their money paid for several categories of spending, such as salaries or materials and supplies.