Jacksonville School District 117 officials say a proposed budget showing approximately $6 million in deficit spending for the new fiscal year may ultimately finish much closer to balanced.
District Chief Financial Officer Richard Cunningham presented the Fiscal Year 2027 proposed budget to the Board of Education during a special meeting Wednesday evening.
The district is budgeting approximately $46.3 million in revenues and $52.3 million in expenditures across its operating funds, which would result in a deficit of just over $6 million. Under that scenario, the district would finish the fiscal year with approximately $31.8 million in operating fund balances.
The district has always used a conservative approach to budgeting revenues while allowing additional room for unexpected expenditures. Unaudited figures from last year’s budget show that last year’s deficit was roughly $2.9 million instead of the more than $7.1 million originally budgeted.
Assistant Superintendent Matthew Moore told WLDS News after Wednesday’s meeting that recent deficit spending has largely resulted from changes on the revenue side: “When you look at our revenues, a lot of the deficit we’re facing right now is due to revenue coming in, not expenditures. Our expenditures were in line this past year with the year before. So that’s our biggest concern right now is the changes in revenue with PPRT going down so much. Also the payback with the tax issue that we found at the district where we were overpaid in property tax [by the county] and now we have to pay that back. So that’s a big part of [the deficit]. We still feel like we’re being very fiscally responsible and keeping the taxpayers in mind when we do that. We are trying to limit our expenditures as best we can. We hope we’re weathering storm. I see a lot of school districts are in the same boat because of the fact that revenues are, the amount of reimbursement we’re getting is going down and so forth. We know it’s always a concern and that’s in the forefront of our mind when we’re making decisions to try and be fiscally responsible and we’re continuing to do that. We’re hoping that the ship will get right a little bit with our revenues and things will kind of catch up to where we believe they should be. We’ve been fairly consistent in trying to keep our expenditures limited as much as possible.”
Cunningham said the district at one point received approximately $6 million from Personal Property Replacement Tax (PPRT) revenue. The district received about $2.6 million during the last fiscal year and has budgeted $2.2 million for FY27.
Some good news from Springfield could significantly improve the district’s financial picture.
Cunningham told the board District 117 is expected to receive an additional $1.4 million in Evidence-Based Funding from the state during FY27. The district remains a Tier 1 school district under the state’s funding formula.
The Illinois State Board of Education announced last week that Evidence-Based Funding statewide has increased by $350 million for FY27, bringing the state’s annual EBF investment to approximately $9.3 billion. The state also changed its methodology for identifying low-income students, while declining replacement-tax revenues and rising education costs have increased the calculated funding needs of districts across Illinois.
Cunningham said the district had already received its first EBF payment under the new calculation and that it lined up with the state’s projection.
Moore says district officials welcome the additional money but aren’t counting on another increase of the same size next year: “We are cautiously optimistic. There is no guarantee that it’ll go up again next year, but at least for this year, we are pleasantly surprised that we are getting some additional funding, which will help and hopefully will limit and maybe allow us not to have a deficit at the end of this year. So, we are cautiously optimistic moving forward that we do have that extra funding this year.”
Cunningham told board members his current expectation is that District 117 could finish FY27 around break-even or with a deficit of approximately $1 million rather than the $6 million contained in the proposed budget.
The district’s proposed budget will be available for public inspection beginning today, August 13. A public hearing on the budget is scheduled for September 16 at 6 p.m. The final adopted budget must be filed with the Morgan and Greene County clerks and the Illinois State Board of Education by September 30.