In a year with a lot of bad financial news, the budget picture for the Windsor Unified School District has only gotten better, with the district moving from significant losses in earlier budget incarnations, to now a healthy reserve and budget surplus.
When Chief Business Officer Lois Standring presented her second interim budget for approval at the March 16 school board meeting, she pointed out that second interim always brings new clarity, with the first draft of the governor’s budget as well as a more complete picture of the attendance numbers.
The governor’s budget delivers a lot of good news for school districts including a significant and compounded increase in cost of living adjustment (COLA), and increase in funding for special education preschool programs and the end of deferrals.
The COLA increase of 3.84% is compounded, which means it is both at COLA for the coming year but also includes a COLA from the previous year which hadn’t been given due to fears about the economic impact of COVID. So, in the coming year, districts will receive a 2.31% COLA for 2020-21 and a 1.5% COLA for 2021-22.
In addition, deferrals — that is a plan enacted by the state in which it didn’t cut funding to schools but did delay when they would actually give them the money, causing cash flow issues for some districts — will not continue and next year’s payments will be on time. Because Windsor’s reserves were high enough, it will not have a cash flow issue.
In addition to that, there will be addition Proposition 51 bond funds made available for districts to apply for, and Standring confirmed that projects at Cali Calmecac and Mattie Washburn would both be eligible for potential funding, is the district was “getting its ducks in a row” to apply.
Finally, the district expects additional incoming funds from the state and the federal government for COVID mitigation members.
Additional changes to the budget since the first interim are a $712,132 in increased restricted revenue budgets, mostly COVID-related funds, a reduction of $320,339 in books and supplies expenditures, a $488,377 saving from cleaning up of salaries and benefits and not needing/using subs, along with the reduction of full time employees in coming budget years as the work force is kept in line with shrinking enrollment.
The district has received $3.7 million in COVID-related funding, which is must share with Cali. The money has been spent on a variety of things, including hiring a COVID coordinator, purchasing over 5,000 Chromebooks for students, along with 260 Swivl cameras and iPads, personal protective equipment, water bottle filling stations, handwashing stations and instructional materials and software. The funding also covered four professional development days for teachers and a contribution of $300,000 to the food services department, who Standring pointed out have operated above and beyond throughout the pandemic, providing grab and go meals for students all year.
Due to all of this, the multi-year projection of the unrestricted budget looks strong, something Standring was delighted to report, though she pointed out the continued falling enrollment will present challenges.
“Unrestricted really tells us how our district is doing,” Standring said. “It is based on average daily attendance (ADA) and because of COVID we were held harmless for ADA this year, and we get to use the same as we got last year … but assume declining enrollment is still happening.”
The multi-year projection shows that the district started the 2020-21 school year with an unrestricted fund balance of $9,326,164, and will end the 2022-23 school year with an unrestricted fund balance of $13,070,579.
This will allow the district to file for positive certification with SCOE.
“The budget is balanced for now,” said Standring.
District construction on track
Two other reports at the meeting informed the board of the status of various construction projects around the district.
The district’s solar project is now complete and fully functional, and the board heard a presentation from Laura Fudge and Phil Villagomez from TerraVerde Energy, LLC about the finalization of the project and what comes next as they move into a maintenance relationship with them.
Construction manager Eric Van Pelt then told the board the status of a variety of projects around the district.
The project to add more portables at Cali is moving forward and the programming phase will come before the board at the next meeting for consideration and approval
The new classroom project at Mattie Washburn has received DSA approval, and they will be planning how to safely complete the project with students on site.
The elementary schools security cameras are all installed, though training for staff has been pushed off to give teachers some breathing room as they now prepare to bring students back to the classroom. The intercom upgrade, part of the security upgrades, will go out to bid this summer.
At Windsor Middle School the maker space has been finished, the project to replace the roofing on the covered walkways at the middle school and the high school continues and the computer and science labs at Cali have been remodeled and signed off on.
Finally, a districtwide repainting project for all sites is under discussion, and color schemes are being chosen.
