GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – The Green Bay Area Public School District (GBAPS) managed to eliminate the 2024-2025 school year budget deficit, which at one point sat at $36M.
In the last six months, the district managed to trim the final amounts.
“We have successfully closed that $2.2 million dollar deficit that we’ve been talking about since December, and we are representing a balanced budget for 2024-2025,” said Angel Roble, the district’s chief financial officer.
It’s taken many months and many major steps to get there, though.
One of those steps is strategically using COVID-19 ESSER funds, which need to be claimed by September of this year. The funds are covering the costs of 2024 summer school, which amounts to $2.2M. The ESSER funds are also being used to cover things that would’ve normally been covered by the district’s operating budget; an additional $1.8M will pay for technology and software.
Another major factor in closing the deficit was thanks to a second year of extra funding from the state’s biennial budget. The budget, which Gov. Evers signed in 2023, allowed districts to claim an additional $325 per student from property taxes. For the coming year, that amounts to around $6M for GBAPS.
“Keep in mind that per-pupil revenue, of course, that declining enrollment is tied to that,” Roble adds. “So our state funding is based upon the FTE and that $325, that revenue continues to go down because of our declining enrollment, so that’s a direct enrollment there.”
Finally, and perhaps the most widely-felt impact on the budget was school closures.
“A significant factor, of course, is the consolidation of three elementary schools. That has saved the district about $2.4M for next year and the years after that, right, that’s kind of a build upon savings,” Roble says.
Wequiock, Tank, and Keller elementary schools closed their doors for good last week.
New spending that begins this year for the district is the 4.12% wage increase for staff, the 2.24% increase in health insurance, and 5.78% increase for dental insurance.
Although this school year is now under control, the outlook for the next few years within the district is grim, especially as they estimate nearly 300 students leaving the district yearly.
“There are so many unknowns but right now,” Roble prefaces. “From what we’re projecting, we are estimated at that budget deficit that first year for $6M and that second year for $11M. Again, those numbers are going to fluctuate as we receive more information but this is based on what we know now.”
Those numbers – $6M and $11M – factor in the extra funding from the state.
However, due to legal fights in Madison, it’s not clear if districts will continue to get $325 per student after 2025. If not, those deficits could jump even higher.
“I do worry that the per-pupil could be yanked or modified in some way that would be detrimental to our district’s finances. To all districts, not just ours,” said Laura McCoy, the school board president.
“That’s an excellent point because we’re talking from the $325, about $6M dollars that we need,” Interim Superintendent Vicki Bayers added.
Another concern for the district is the $16.5M operational referendum that was passed in 2017.
“We passed [it] for a 10-year time frame. In 2016-2017, that’s when we passed it, so that will sunset on 2026-2027, so that is another thing we’re going to have to plan for as a district over the next couple of years,” Roble said.
If the board approves the closure of three more elementary schools during its meeting on June 24th, the district will save around $3M annually.
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