Brookfield Local School District Treasurer Craig Yaniglos said the district ended the 2081-19 school year with about $634,000 unspent, which, when added to the $1.1 million left over from past years, results in a $1.7 million cash balance.
That money will come in handy as the district expects to spend more money than it brings in in 2020 and 2023.
The numbers in the updated five-year forecast, presented in May, take into account declining enrollment, which affects state funding; the employee contracts approved over the winter; and the cost trends in employee benefits, Yaniglos said.
School board member Kelly Carrier said the district’s expectation of having about $1.5 million a year in reserve for each of the next five years might give people an unrealistic picture of the district’s financial health.
promo“If you look at the forecast extended out for five years, our expenses are increasing, the funding is flat,” she said. “Once you get to that fifth year, we’re in a just shy of a $200,000 deficit and, unless something changes, that trend is going to continue into an increasingly negative position every year, which will eat away at whatever cash balances we have. I don’t want people to be misled into thinking, because we have this hefty cash balance, that we’re sitting pretty, because we’re not.”
Yaniglos added that the $1.7 million currently in reserve is about where the district should be according to the auditor recommendation that it have the equivalent of 60 days’ worth of expenses available in cash at all times.
The district is undergoing its annual audit, Yaniglos told the board in July.