The Crookston School District Long-term planning committee met on Tuesday afternoon and discussed the preliminary 2023-24 school year budget.
The school district will get $1.6 million dollars more in funding next year compared to this past school year. Unfortunately, costs continue to rise, with about 75 percent of the school district costs being staff.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the district was about $200,000 short of balancing its $14 million budget.
“It looks like revenues and expenditures will be within $200,000 of each other, and we will be a little bit short,” said Crookston School District Business Manager Laura Lyczewski. “We have been adequately funded by the state this year, giving us more cross-subsidy money, which is our special ed expenditures that we pay for. A better compensatory revenue because of our free and reduced population, so all-in-all, we are happy with where we are.”
The school district’s COVID funding has come to an end, and that is noticed next school year. “We were hoping it would be close, but we lost COVID money from before,” said Lyczewski. “The state has come forward with a four percent funding increase, so all-in-all, it worked out okay.”
Besides the staff accounting for 75 percent of the expenditures in the budget, there are other big items. “Our utilities have been up, but I think everybody’s utilities are up, and when you run 18 busses, our fuel bill is a little high,” said Lyczewski, who also added that a purchase of a bus is another big ticket item in next school year’s budget.
NEW FUNDING SOURCES FOR 2023-24-
$326,000- 4 percent increase in the per pupil unit funding formula
$483,000- 44 percent special education cross-subsidy reduction
$550,000- Additional Compensatory revenue
$190,950- Alternative delivery of specialized instructional service (ADSIS)
$40,000- Student support personnel revenue
$40,000- Library/Media Center revenue
$14,000-Additional ELL new revenue
$12,600-Additional Transportation sparsity
Total new revenue from last year-$1,656,550
