The Park City School District’s new Budget Advisory Committee held its first meeting last week.
According to Superintendent Ray Timothy, the meeting introduced committee members to education finance and provided them with the materials needed to move forward.
“We went back through the financial history over the past several years to show the financial health of the district and gave committee members a walk through including the revenues and the expenditures side of it,” Timothy said.
Committee members also received handouts of past budget adjustments including areas the district needs to make cuts.
Timothy said the committee’s goal is to review the budget, make recommendations to the school board and see if there are areas for revenue enhancement. The committee will meet monthly in order to make recommendations to the school board in February.
“As a district, we need to gather information and look at our strategic plan.” Timothy added, “We went through information they need to help them with their decision making.”
Copies of compensation and salary schedules along with student-teacher ratios compared to the U.S. average were also included in the information packets, according to Timothy.
Timothy said the committee looked at how much money the district is spending per pupil compared to the U.S. average. According to data produced in 2009, the U.S. spent an average of $10,591 per pupil.
In 2009 the district spent $9,095 per student. Timothy said due to inflation, the school district now spends slightly more than $10,000 per student. The state average is $6,600.
“We’re spending about $1,500 dollars less per student than the national average.” Timothy added, “We compare ourselves with the high-performing districts. There are some districts that are spending more than $20,000 per pupil, but we’re out-scoring some of those districts.”
Timothy said the committee will address how the district will adjust to receiving less funding from federal and state sources.
“The dilemma for the committee to address is what has happened to us financially over the years. Our enrollment and expenditures have been about the same, but our federal and state dollars have declined significantly,” he said.
The school district’s expenditures outweigh the revenue coming in, according to Timothy.
“We’ve managed to take care of that because of the rainy day fund that we can tap into to balance the budget. But we can’t continue to do that,” he said.
The committee is made up of 13 community members and district employees.
“Education finance is not an easy thing to understand. We have some people on the committee who have some good expertise there and they will be a big help to us,” Timothy said.