School Dept. fiscal year 1999 budget closes in the black
Published on July 21st, 1999
STONEHAM, MA - The numbers look good, according to Superintendent Dr. Joseph Connelly, who announced that the school department's fiscal year 1999 will officially close in the black, with a balance of $265,815 in unexpended funds.
Perhaps it was anticipation of summer vacation plans or maybe the beckoning of the All Star Game's first pitch, but regardless of the reason, the School Committee completed its business last week in record time.
The School Committee app-roved the FY99 bill warrant which now goes to the Town Accountant. School Department Business Manager Donald Simpson reported that, with the exception of only a handful of outstanding purchase orders, that action closes the books on the FY99.
Connelly commended the efforts of all budget holders, who were asked during FY99 to do all their spending for the year by April 15 in order to allow sufficient time for billing and payment by year-end.
"For an $18 million budget to have this number of outstanding (purchase orders) is a job well done," he said.
Connelly also advised that, as planned previously, $100,000 of that unexpended figure will be put back into the town's general fund to offset health insurance costs that were intentionally underfunded during the budgeting process.
Other School Committee action during the evening resulted in approval to prepay $100,000 to the Special Education Educational Management (SEEM) Collaborative.
Stoneham works with several other surrounding communities to service low incidence special education needs. Massachusetts General Law allows prepayment of such costs to a collaborative. In consideration of the funds available from FY99 and the very tightly budgeted special education budget for FY2000, Connelly urged approval on this matter to cover any unanticipated special education costs.
Formal motions were made and approved to secure state reimbursement for the Middle School emergency construction project. The project, which addresses repair to the brick veneer and replacement of windows, has already been approved and is expected to be completed within the next three to four weeks, according to Connelly.
However, last week's vote was needed to formally request 63 per cent reimbursement of the project cost from the state in the 1999 fiscal year. The total cost of the project is $165,765 which was appropriated from FY99 capital funds. The town seeks to get back approximately $100,000 of that. Reimbursement will be made to the town and the School Committee plans to sponsor an article at the October Town Meeting to have this money reappropriated from the municipal budget to the school budget.
An additional vote by the committee yielded approval to set aside approximately $13,000 in contingency funds for unanticipated costs associated with the Middle School repair project. This action and figure was recommended by the project's architect.
Finally, Connelly reported that virtually all staffing for the upcoming school year will be in place by the end of the month. He originally anticipated having this area finalized by July 1 but said that a higher than usual number of transfer requests, resignations and retirements made meeting this goal difficult.
Some of the more challenging positions to fill, he said, included reading specialists and chemistry and world language instructors.
"I'll go out on a limb...Most will be filled by our (next) July meeting...(and) we'll stay on budget," he said.
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