2015-16 School Year and Budget Summary

September 29, 2015

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It is hard to believe that school has already been in session for over six weeks with the end of the first quarter on the horizon.  The start of this school year has been hectic just like in other years, yet much has been accomplished.  Our staff members were prepared and have been working hard to make this another successful school year.  On top of the work they put in getting ready for students in the buildings, they have also been active in our strategic planning/school improvement discussions.  Each of the buildings staff members and parent representatives, along with the district administration and school board members, have been making progress on the goals in our plan.  I have been very impressed with the progress.  I would like to thank everyone who has dedicated their time and effort to improving the education we provide our children.  I truly believe that if you are not improving, you are falling behind.

One of the committees I am serving on has the task of improving our website.  We value your input.  If you have ideas on how we can make our website more informational and more useful to you, please email your thoughts to me at greg.barnes@sewardschools.org .

In other news, on September 14 the school board approved the 2015-16 School Budget.  The main fund we use for instructing students is the General Fund.  The budget of expenditures for the general fund increased 2.19% for 15-16. 

On the receipt side of the general fund, we lost another $310,000 in calculated state aid.  We do get financial support from the state for special education, school lands, etc., but our aid calculated through the state aid formula, is down to $40,564 for this school year.  In 2009-10 we received $2.1 million through the same formula, so you can see we are down considerably.

Our state aid formula calculates “needs” and “resources” for each school district in Nebraska and then uses the formula to raise the “resources” to meet the “needs”.  In Seward our property valuations (resources) have gone up considerably since 2009-10, so our formula “resources” now exceed our formula “needs” so we do not get any equalization aid from the state.  This is a simplified explanation, but generally speaking, that is how the formula works and why we only receive $40,564.

With the state aid loss ($310,000) and budget increase of 2.19% ($439,000), we had to increase our general fund property tax request.  We were able to use some cash reserves to help off-set this deficit, but we still increased the general fund property tax asking by $177,743.  Our valuation increased by almost 6% this year so we were able to reduce our general fund levy by 3.6 cents.

What about the other funds?  We were able to decrease our Bond Fund and QCPU Fund tax asking by roughly $225,000, but we increased our Special Building Fund tax asking by $458,500.  Generally speaking, the Bond and QCPU funds are used to repay debt on past building projects.  The Special Building Fund is used for current and future building projects.  More specifically we have identified a number of projects in the near future such as heating and air conditioning units that are near or over the life expectancy for that equipment, and we need to start putting money into the Special Building Fund for their replacement. 

Overall, with all funds put together, our total tax asking went up by $411,814, but our total property tax levy dropped 2.9 cents.  If your valuation went up, you will be paying more taxes, if your valuation stayed the same, then your property taxes levied by the school will go down.  See the spreadsheet below for more specific property tax changes from last year.