Proposed District 219 Budget Calls For Increases

Niles Township High School District 219 school board members got their first look at a proposed spending plan for the 2011-12 school year that has spending going up 4.3 percent to $147.3 million and the district’s operating expense per pupil jumping 7.63 percent to $26,393.

However, the actual operating expense per pupil could be lower.

Revenue is projected to rise 4.33 percent to $152.8 million, with 95 percent coming from local sources, chiefly property taxes.

The plan is a preliminary estimate that will likely change before the board votes to officially post the tentative budget for public comment June 27. Final approval is set for Aug. 15.

Before then, the school board will hold a special finance committee meeting at 6:30 p.m. June 22 so that Paul O’Malley, the assistant superintendent for business, can answer any questions board members might have.

District 219 Superintendent Nanciann Gatta told board members that she is still looking for ways to trim spending, although the largest share of expenses are in the education fund, and the bulk of those costs are salaries and benefits that have been determined by collective bargaining.

The budget assumes a 1.52 percent increase in spending on administrator salaries, Gatta said, but she expects to hold that line item flat.

“I’m not satisfied with this number,” Gatta told the board. “We are still looking to change this and reduce this.”

She also pointed out that a restructuring plan approved in April helped keep the spending projections from going even higher.

The plan cut the equivalent of roughly 10 full time teachers at a savings of about $1 million. However, some of the money saved was reinvested in priority areas such as math and English.

“Without those strategic reductions this number could be even higher,” Gatta said of the increase in operating expense per pupil. “It could be 10 percent or more the way it used to be before we started the restructuring.”

Operating expense per pupil has been a sore point for school board members and administrators because it was second highest in the state for high school districts in 2009, the last year for which complete statewide numbers are available.

Susan Husselbee, the district’s director of fiscal services, pointed out that the budget is balanced, with more than $5 million more in projected revenues than in projected expenses. Earlier forecasts called for the district’s expenses to exceed its revenues in this budget year. Then the school board embarked on a three-year effort to restructure and trim costs, putting off the time when spending is expected to exceed revenue to fiscal 2013, the next budget year.