District 205 is expecting to finish the year with more revenue than expenditures but to do it they had to assume the state of Illinois wouldn’t meet their obligations.
K-12 schools are supposed to get four categorical payments a year that are used for special education, transportation and free and reduced lunch programs.
For Galesburg schools these payments should amount to roughly $1.5 million. But 205 Superintendent John Asplund has enough experience to know that often times all of those payments don’t come in.
Asplund says he of course would hope to get more but can’t count on it based on his experience dealing with Illinois government. Going forward he says the district will probably budget the same way.
Extra funding from the new funding formula approved last year gave the board some extra cushion.
“We need to build up our reserve a little bit because of all the cuts that had to be made because we didn’t have a reserve,” Asplund tells WGIL. “It’s not like we’re just going to start becoming spendthrift, so you’re just throwing money around but we’re happy we had a positive surplus at the end of the year – or we project to.”
Asplund has previously explained to WGIL that ISBE will often disburse money but the comptroller can’t actually process the payment to schools if the money isn’t available.
The first categorical payment wasn’t received until February, about 5 months late.
Even with the income tax increase approved with last year’s state budget Asplund says things like higher education institutions and medicare got paid first.
