There are a couple of items in the latest WBOE FAQ posting that I felt I had to respond to:

First is the question, “How is the Woodstock Public Schools District budget managed throughout the year?” —

The answer posted by the Superintendent/BOE didn’t really address how the budget is managed – how expenses are tracked versus budget, how monies are transferred from one account to another to meet changing needs, etc. – it was clearly written to try to blunt criticism over the revelation of the enormous bounce in spending that took place last year in May and June where spending leaped by some $676K above normal during that two month period with almost $300k in checks having been written on the last day of the fiscal year, June 30th.

They explain that “in order to remain within the approved budget … the district will often freeze expenditures on less time-sensitive items”, and then go on to explain that things like salaries and utilities are paid on time but expenditures like books and computer supplies might be deferred.   What I find kind of unbelievable about this is that when you take out tuitions and personnel costs – like salaries, insurance, payroll taxes, etc. (none of which are optional in terms of payment unless you fire somebody) – and those pesky utilities and diesel for the buses, you only have about $1,300,000 left, which would mean that over fifty percent (50%) of these “less time sensitive expenditures” would have had to have been frozen for 10 months and then suddenly released.   Smells more than a little fishy.

But then comes the next “question and answer”, “What percentage of the WPS budget is discretionary?” —

The answer given was more than a bit fuzzy but it was implied that non-discretionary items amounted to 97.69% of the budget, but within this there are items with some latitude such as SPICE, music, sports, educational coordinators, etc. – maybe I’m missing something but with the possible exception of “etc” none of these would appear to be particularly amenable to being frozen for ten months and the suddenly spent in the last two.  Just for reference, the total WPS budget for 2008/9 was $9,609,805.00.  So the discretionary part would be 2.31% of that or $221,986.00, or if you include all high school costs $375,491.00.

So, what I find comical almost to the point of absurdity is that the “bounce” is two to three times the size of the entire discretionary budget – by the Superintendent’s numbers.

The bottom line is that the Superintendent and the BOE need to come up with one story and stick to it, and they might just want to pass it by a 5th grade math class to make sure that their numbers check out.

Dave Richardson