- Jackson Public Schools Superintendent Jeff Beal expects no shocks to District budget as COVID funding ends.
- Beal says Board of Education has prepared by building up a roughly $19M reserve to smooth out funding decrease.
- Bigger concern, he says, is per pupil funding, which did not increase this year even as much as was conservatively hoped.
- Video shows interview with Beal.
- BONUS VIDEO: How disruptive to learning were the lockdowns? Beal explains.
"We put away a fund balance, you know, roughly $19 million."
— Jackson Public Schools Superintendent Jeff Beal
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)
As emergency COVID funding winds down, some school districts are going to struggle financially.
Not Jackson Public Schools, says Superintendent Jeff Beal. I'm your Fox 47 Neighborhood Reporter Darius Udrys, and I spoke with Beal about what will smooth out the reductions. "We know that the money was going to come to an end," says Beal.
Not all sunsets are beautiful.
Some — like the end of extensive emergency funding — can be quite disruptive.
Almost as disruptive as the "learning loss" Beal speaks of due to the lockdowns:
"We're still dealing with that, right? Students are still coming to us today, you know, where they lack some of skills, you know, the reading skills or the numbers sense."
HOW DISRUPTIVE TO LEARNING WERE THE LOCKDOWNS? BEAL EXPLAINS:
Beal says, in all, the District received about $32M in COVID funding — all of which will have to be spent by the end of September.
Does this leave a gaping hole in the budget? Beal says no. "The plan has always been: how do we extend those dollars?"
And it sounds like the plan was to save some of them.
"So, we've been squirreling it away, if you will — burying it in the backyard for a rainy day and — guess what? — it's raining," says Beal.
The Superintendent tells me by offsetting some expenses using COVID funding, the District built up a $19M reserve — about $6-7M higher than his own ordinary, conservative recommendations for a roughly $65M District budget.
That reserve, he says, will be used to smooth out the decrease in funding…while sustaining some of the learning strategies adopted in COVID's wake that Beal says are working.
"We spent a lot of money and a lot of time bringing kids in for Step Forward programs, for kindergarten camps, for things along those lines to help kids get acclimated, to help kids get the skills, to help communicate with parents what they need to do to help their children be successful."
As the reserve is spent down, Beal hopes to make ends meet through attrition, grant seeking, and savings rather than layoffs.
"The Board of Education is going to each year have to, you know, control the spigot, if you will. How much do they spend out of the fund balance this year? How much do they spend out of the fund balance next year?" he explains.
But the amount of savings that can be found is not infinite.
The bigger concern this year, Beal says, is overall per pupil spending. It was not increased even the minimum the District had hoped for.
"We were expecting — and there was a proposal out there, I think — you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of $240-250 more per pupil than what we got," he says. "So we're frozen in time, and we're going to see increases in costs."
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