The Putnam County School Board’s final budget approved with the final gap between expenses and recvenues at some $1.7 million.
Director of Schools Corby King said the county’s change to the sales tax funding should produce some $2.2 million in additional revenue. King said the district will also cut costs on new science textbooks.
“Rather than paying all of that up front in year one, we’re going to divide that into a two year cycle.” King said. “So we’re paying half of that in year one, we’ll pay half of that next year, and that will give us the eight year adoption cycle for the science textbooks. So, that reduced our budget by $880,000.”
King said the $1.7 million will be covered by fund balance.
“Our fund balance is healthy,” King said. “Mark [McReynolds] and I talked have about that. We have some 18, $19 million in fund balance so it’s healthy. We feel comfortable with this. We need to keep a certain percentage. This is above the certain percentage, so it doesn’t put it in a strain this year.”
King said pending approval from the county commissioners, the budget would be finalized.
“This just kind of lets us move forward,” King said. This is all the scales, all the things we have to do.”
The budget started with a gap of some $5.1 million after the first draft in May. Changes between the first and second drafts included a TISA funding increase of some $231,000 and a $67,000 increase from the penny rate.
The gap was some $4.8 million after the second draft reading earlier this month.
The third draft approved unanimously.
