Jacksonville School District 117 officials took a similar tone of low revenues and increased expenses for last night’s annual public hearing on the current budget.
Revenues are expected to take a major hit this year, due to decreases in distribution from the State of Illinois from Personal Property Replacement Tax (PPRT) and a loss of federal pandemic relief money (ESSER), which expires at the end of next month.
Treasurer Richard Cunningham says he figured in increases across all of the district’s major funds for Fiscal Year 2025: “For this year, there’s an 8% increase over what we spent last year in our Education Fund. The big reason for that is going to be salaries and insurance. Those are always going up. There is also anticipated curriculum costs for JHS’s technology subscription renewal. Operations & Maintenance is a 33% increase over what we actually spent last year. That’s because the Eisenhower Elementary renovation project costs didn’t come out of last year’s budget, so I have to budget it in for this year. I’m still receiving expenses for that. The Transportation Fund has a 7% increase over what it was last year. That’s also due to salaries, insurance, and increase material costs for buses.”
Cunningham says the process of calculating the budget from the past continues to carry on into the future to serve the district well. Last year’s preliminary budget had a nearly $7.2 million projected budget deficit, but the actual budget at the end of the year showed a $2 million positive increase in the district’s fund balance starting at just north of $40 million. Cunningham says remaining conservative places the district in a good position should things go wrong: “We always under estimate those revenues and over estimate our expenditures. This budget is not any different than what it was last year because I still had to move the Eisenhower expenditures over. If you look at the FY25 surplus/deficit, I have us at a minus-$7 million with that in there, giving us an ending fund balance of $33.3 million. Now, that’s worst case scenario and you have to have a lot of stuff go wrong by the end of the year.”
Superintendent Steve Ptacek agreed with Cunningham’s assessment, and feels like a similar outcome will occur compared to the previous year’s actual budget.
Ptacek and the Board of Education turned their discussion towards the future after the budget presentation, looking at the looming large cohort of students that are incoming with special needs within the next two years. Ptacek repeated to the board that due to PPRT’s revenues bottoming out and the loss of ESSER funds for district’s who used the money for salaries and permanent expenditures statewide, he foresees a grim financial future. He said that until finances for the district, and ultimately the state become clearer later in the school year, talks of another major project should be tabled.
The Board and Ptacek agreed that a solution to find more space for that incoming group of students who require special needs will need to be addressed with possible future action and possible classroom moves to where the district can find suitable space.