With the June 30 close of the current fiscal year just around the corner, the Madison Board of Education (BOE) is keeping an eye on the current budget deficit and taking steps to cover the shortfall before closing out this year’s books. The BOE recently put two funding requests before the Board of Finance (BOF) and the town for its consideration.

Unanticipated Special Education costs are the primary driver of the deficit. As of June 19, the district’s special education deficit was $132,653.

Special education is one of the most difficult budget items to plan for. Boards across the state look at numerous factors to try to accurately predict expenditures for the year, but the movement of students or a change in needs can often throw that particular part of the budget off kilter in the middle of the year, leaving boards to try to pull funds from reserve accounts or other parts of the budget to cover the costs.

There is currently approximately $52,596 available in other parts of the BOE budget and if all of those funds can be used, that leaves a total shortfall of about $100,000.

The town has an External Placements Reserve Fund, an account established to help cover the cost when a student requires special education services that town schools cannot provide, and the money required to provide those services elsewhere exceeds the budget. If at the end of a fiscal year the board has a surplus, it adds those monies to the reserve fund. The account currently has about $280,000.

BOE previously approved a letter that formally requests the BOE pull $82,000 from the External Placements Reserve Fund to cover the deficit in this fiscal year. At a BOE finance committee meeting on June 19, members discussed that the special education deficit has jumped a bit since the letter was sent to the BOF, but the numbers could still change for the better before the end of the year so the committee chose not to modify the request, according to Finance Director Stacy Nobitz.

“We are looking at $100,000 right now and we asked for $82,000 to be released from our reserve account,” she said. “We can always modify that if the $82,000 becomes the true $100,000. We can always go back to the BOF and say we need a little bit more.”

The BOF approved the $82,000 pull at its meeting on June 20.

The Other Deficit Factor

With the deficit, the BOE will not be able to return any funds to the town at the end of this year. The BOE is not required to return funds at the end of the fiscal year, but the BOE was counting on having unspent money returned to the town this year to be used to fund an Effective School Solutions (ESS) contractor for Polson Middle School next year.

Introduced to the high school three years ago, ESS is designed to provide intensive clinical programming for students with significant emotional and behavioral problems so they can stay in the public school system. The high school currently has two ESS contractors and the district wanted to expand the program to Polson. In the approved budget proposal, the board elected to hold off on the position for one year as the district works through a configuration change.

Since the position was excluded from the main budget, over the course of two meetings the board ultimately decided to approve funding the position by “requesting from the Town of Madison for the 2018-’19 fiscal year an assignment and/or appropriation of $120,000 for the purpose of funding the ESS program at Polson Middle School.” The condition of the appropriation was that the $120,000 come from unspent funds the board would return at the end of this year from the current budget.

There was no other plan approved to fund the program because typically the BOE does return some money to the town each year; this year proved to be atypical. The BOE had discussed various ways to try to find the $120,000 for the program, but the easiest and cleanest solution came from the town.

At the BOF meeting on June 20, the board approved a $120,000 special appropriation out of fund balance to fund the program in the coming year. BOF Chair Jean Fitzgerald said the request still has to go before the Board of Selectmen (BOS) and to Town Meeting, but that the board thinks this program is a wise long-term investment.

“This is a program in which we believe will help us long term financially in terms of outplacements,” she said. “This is a program that exists at the high school right now, it has been incredibly successful and we believe moving it down to Polson will increase the help that students need and it will help avoid any potential future spending and liability for the board moving forward.”

Fitzgerald said at the high school the program has been able to prevent outplacements and even bring kids back into district who had previously been outplaced. The reason is because the program has contracted clinicians who are able to do more for students in district in regards to care during and after school hours than a typical school counselor can provide due to restrictions under state and federal law.

“It’s a way of saying the first and foremost concern is the students themselves and the second one is also the advantage of the financial aspect of it,” she said.

All members of the BOF agreed the program is a worthy investment and approved the appropriation. The board will look to fund the appropriation with some unanticipated state education dollars given to the town in the most recent state budget approved this May.