A drop in enrollment is forcing the Knox Community School Corporation to cut its 2021 Education Fund budget. Treasurer Kasey Clark recently told the school board that she based it on 1,866 students, but the actual enrollment ended up being 1,714.
“So I made a lot of revisions in supplies and benefits, and lowered our budget down from $12 million down to $11.1 million,” she explained.
The number of students a school corporation has determines how much Education Fund money it gets from the state. The school board approved the reduction, but Clark said it may not be reflected in the final budget from the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance, since the documents were already submitted with the higher figure.
Clark added that the school corporation was on track to end 2020 in the black, and she hoped to have some extra money to put in the Rainy Day Fund. Superintendent Dr. William Reichhart said his goal is to bring it up to $2 million.
“We’ve done a good job of saving money,” Reichhart said. “We ought to make sure that we have a Rainy Day for if something major goes out in the future, that we don’t drain it, and we don’t know what the budget’s going to do at the Statehouse this year. Hopefully not, but we may have to tap into that Rainy Day Fund at some point in time to keep our staff that we want to keep and still give raises that we want to give our staff.”
Board members also agreed to let school officials transfer up to $2 million from the Education Fund to the Operations Fund in 2021. It’s become a typical step for school corporations around Indiana, since the state adjusted the school funding structure last year. Since there typically isn’t enough property tax revenue to cover certain expenses that used to be funded with state money, local school boards are essentially required to go through the process of moving it out of the Education Fund.
