Chances Are, Your School District Doesn’t Have a Budget
An actual operating budget would provide decision makers with the detailed information they need to allocate resources, manage performance, and assess the results. It would include all labor costs (teacher salaries and benefits), instructional materials (textbooks), overhead (maintenance and utility costs), and administrative costs (superintendent and staff). Ideally, each school and department in the district would develop their own budgets, which would then be combined into a master budget at the district level. Obviously, Monona Grove isn’t doing any of that, and the chickens finally came home to roost.
“I guess I always assumed that you all had more information than what was presented. I don’t think I can run under this assumption anymore. My trust has been broken, and I’m appalled at the lack of oversight that this board has demonstrated time and time again,” one mother told the school board on Aug. 26th.
Evansville
Sadly, Monona Grove’s attempt to run a school district without a budget is not unique. Many school districts throughout the state are doing the exact same thing.
MacIver first encountered this phenomenon shortly after Evansville School District’s referendum failed this past spring. In the aftermath, the district seemed hellbent on punishing taxpayers for rejecting its demands. It announced a wide barrage of cuts–seemingly designed to maximize the emotional pain inflicted on parents–to programs like art, science, foreign languages, and tech ed teachers. The goal was to cut $2.1 million.
Like too many school districts, Evansville does not post its budgets online, which makes it hard to look into its financial problems. The MacIver Institute, in response, simply asked the district for its budget. But instead, what we got was a budget presentation.
It showed that Evansville got $23.3 million in general fund revenue in 2022-23, and $23.7 million in general fund revenue in 2023-24. In both years, revenue exceeded expenses, and so its fund balance grew from $3.36 million to $3.43 million in 2023 and to $4.1 million in 2024. This occurred despite federal aid dropping by half during that time. Looking at these numbers, it’s obvious there isn’t a crisis; nor a need to cut core programs like science, and certainly no need for a referendum.
Something else must be going on that led to Evansville’s demand for a referendum. Unfortunately, no other budget information is available. We went back and forth with the district for weeks trying to get it. First, they sent us a one-page budget summary.
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