2020 VHCS budget includes 4% raise for employees

All employees of the Vestavia Hills school system should see a little bit more money in the bank this fiscal year, with the state of Alabama mandating and paying for part of a 4% raise for all school employees.

The raise led the school system to budget an additional $4 million for instructional services and about a $1.2 million increase in operations and maintenance costs.

The school system’s chief financial officer, Courtney Brown, said this year’s budget was focused on tightening up spending and maintaining reserves. While the state mandates that school districts have one month’s worth of operating money in reserves, Vestavia has worked to build up two months of reserves, Brown said.

While expenditures increased from about $72 million in 2019 to about $79 million this year, revenues are also expected to increase. State revenues are projected to increase from about $35 million in 2019 to $38.5 million in 2020, and local revenues are expected to increase from about $39 million in 2019 to about $40 million in 2020.

Brown said about 51% of the school system’s revenues come from local property taxes, with the rest coming from state and federal funds.

Much of the school district’s expenditures — about 79% — are dedicated to personnel, including salary and benefits. While that doesn’t leave much flexibility for the rest of the budget, Brown and Superintendent Todd Freeman said they recognize the importance of investing in school employees.

Brown said the finance staff and department heads worked to make a more conservative budget this year, bringing general administration and instructional support costs down by about $400,000 each.

While the school system added Vestavia Hills Elementary Dolly Ridge this school year, Vestavia Hills Elementary Central was closed, and though a new school comes with certain costs, most of that is in personnel, Brown said. Because the school district didn’t have to add a large number of staff members, choosing instead to shift around teachers from across the district’s five elementary schools, there wasn’t much added cost with the new school coming online, Brown said.

This year’s budget also included an increase in state preschool allocation (from about $20,000 in 2019 to about $32,000 in 2020) and a decrease in instructional support, due to more conservative departmental budgeting.

Other steps Brown said the system has taken to be more efficient include centralizing the purchase of cleaning supplies, examining how to be more efficient in utility usage and creating a simpler system for teachers to purchase items for their classrooms. Each teacher was given $600 to spend on their classroom, Brown said, but instead of turning in receipts, teachers will be given a pre-loaded debit card they can use. The school has also elected to use state funds to pay for maintenance, freeing up the use of local money for other needs, Brown said. The way the system uses those local funds matters, Freeman said.

“This is a business that we have to operate and be accountable to our community for,” Freeman said.

The budget process begins when the school system receives information from the state letting school officials know how much they will be receiving from the state’s educational trust fund, which is based on the average number of students after the first 20 days of school, Brown said.

The system’s long-term goals include “maintaining financial stability while continuing to meet strategic goals,” Freeman said, as well as maintaining a healthy reserve. The school district also wants to continue to have positive financial audits. It helps that Brown has experience as a CPA and actually audited the Vestavia Hills school district in a previous job.

To see the budget, visit vestavia. k12.al.us/Page/703.