GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – The Green Bay Area Public School District is projecting a $36 million budget deficit in three years.
It has district officials taking an earlier look at the budget for next school year. For the first time, Green Bay’s Board of Education is getting a rundown of its next budget, four months before it normally votes on it.
“Things will change from now until October, but this is a snapshot,” said Angela Roble, chief financial officer for the district.
The district is projecting $297 million in general fund expenses for ’22-‘23. However, projected revenue is only $279 million. It plans to make up the nearly $18 million difference with one-time COVID-19 relief money, also known as ESSER funds.
“We have strategically saved our ESSER funding as a district because we knew these deficits were coming and we knew we had to cover them for the next two years,” said Sarah Noah, executive director of finance for the district.
In the ‘23-‘24 school year, the district is projecting a $32 million deficit and plans to use ESSER funds to cover it.
In ‘24-‘25, the projected deficit grows to $36 million dollars. However, the ESSER funds won’t be available to cover the difference, as they must be spent by the end of September 2024.
“We are facing many challenges as a district, including declining enrollment, inflation,” said Roble.
Wisconsin Policy Forum has been studying school districts’ use of the one-time ESSER funds. Unlike Green Bay, most districts have been gravitating toward spending the money on one-time expenses, rather than regular operational needs, according to senior researcher Sarah Shaw.
“Using the COVID money to cover is a little dicey because that money is going to run out. These normal operational costs are rising and so there is a tradeoff of how much are we putting toward making sure that our normal operations continue versus really investing in what do our kids need.”
In Green Bay’s case, it’s also been losing revenue due to declining enrollment, which has remained in steady decline for the past six years and is expected to continue for at least the next ten. Meanwhile, the number of total full-time employees in the district has been going up.
“We’re headed in the wrong direction essentially,” said Roble. “So the gap that you see there in ’21-’22, that is a major source of why we’re facing a fiscal cliff and facing our structural deficit in the next couple of years.”
“These numbers are kind of scary and we have a lot of interesting work ahead of us as our district works through this,” said Laura McCoy, president of the school board.
The district’s financial leaders say they were conservative with their projections and a lot can change, especially with what schools receive in the next state budget.
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