Stephens Co. School Superintendent Concerned About Budget Numbers

A quarter of the way through its fiscal year, the Stephens County School System is running one percent over budget.

That is according to the financial report presented at Tuesday’s Stephens County Board of Education meeting by School Superintendent Bryan Dorsey.

Dorsey said that 25 percent of the fiscal year is complete and currently, the school system is running at 26 percent of budgeted expenditures for the general fund.

He said that he is not completely surprised considering the budget situation the school system was facing.

“To say that I thought we had the perfect budget when we were dealing with so many numbers that were not accurate, I would not say it is a shock,” said Dorsey. “We certainly do not want it, but it is not a shock when you are honestly just trying to do the best-educated guess you could with inaccurate numbers.”

Dorsey said if that trend were to continue, the school system would end the Fiscal Year $300,000 over budget.

He said that the next couple of months will show if that trend continues, but that his best guess is that it will.

Dorsey said he is highly concerned about the potential overage.

“Once again, we are in a situation where we have no reserve fund to work with, so any money over is an alarming situation,” said Dorsey. “To think that we cannot manage and come up with things on this fiscal year or next, obviously I believe we can do that. The discomfort it may cause us is certainly something nobody would enjoy or would want to go through, but that is just part of having to recover from the deficit that we were dealt with.”

He went on to say that the school system only has two options to deal with any potential budget overage.

“One, you can hold steadfast, make some preliminary calculations to what you thought revenues would be the next year,” said Dorsey. “It would likely put us into the scenario of a deficit and we would have those findings again. The other option is to make midterm adjustments where you reduce the budget and that would have to look at every aspect of the school system and the Board would have some tough decisions to make either way.”

Dorsey said that next month, the school system will also begin reviewing its budget in preparation for Fiscal Year 2016.

He said that review will include going through each and every program in the school system’s budget in detail with the school board to understand its full cost to the school system.

“Do you know what it costs to have this part of the program operate versus this part of a program?” said Dorsey, who added it is important to get community, student, and staff feedback.

“That way, if we have to make cuts, we make them strategically,” said Dorsey.

Dorsey said that information presented in that process could also help the school system make any further cuts needed in this current fiscal year if that is required.

Dorsey did tell the board that the school system is meeting all of its financial obligations, though he said the first couple months of the fiscal year were very tight.