Board of Ed to refund town $500,000

Board of Ed to refund town $500,000

By: Gregory Hyman, Staff Writer

06/10/2008

Resulting from what one official called a change from the accounting practices of previous years, the Board of Education announced it will refund $500,000 from its current budget to West Hartford's general fund.

At a Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, June 3, board officials voted unanimously to return the unused budget funds to the town of West Hartford. Director of Finance and Planning for West Hartford public schools Chip Ward said the bulk of funds came from a turnover in personnel, wherein higher salaried, retiring teachers were replaced with 50 new teachers with an average salary of $55,000. Additional budget savings were accrued in the form of liquidated damages the town received for underperformance on the school bus contract with Durham School Services.
Ward said West Hartford public schools had reserved the funds over the course of the year - as it does with funds each year - for unanticipated expenditures that could arise. This year, Ward said, West Hartford public schools administrators were able to maintain those extra funds, and West Hartford has already budgeted the returned funds into the budget they recently adopted.
"This year's been a pretty good year. We didn't have to use that money up," Ward said.
Board member Harry Captain said that in past years, the Board of Education - as a consistent practice - would spend these surplus funds at the end of the year, because Connecticut law forbids boards of education from reserving funds between fiscal years. The Board of Education in West Hartford would engage in "prebuying," or using budget funds to purchase items or services listed in the following year's budget. This would reduce the latter year's budget according to the amount spent.
However, one of the downsides to prebuying, members of the board indicated, is that it can - by increasing the element of complexity in the budget - cloud the transparency of the budgeting process. If, for instance, West Hartford public schools requested $600,000 for textbooks for 2011 and prebought $500,000 in textbooks the year before, the 2011 budget would reflect a mere $150,000 expenditure on textbooks.
"This could be a little misleading," Captain said.
By experimenting with a different methodology, board members said they hoped to increase transparency in the budgeting process.
"By returning the funds to the town, we start to establish our line items so that year after year they're comparable, and you have an idea of exactly what it takes to run the schools," Captain said.
Bruce Putterman, the board's secretary, said the switch in accounting practices was a part of what West Hartford public schools had done to increase transparency over the last year, a year in which transparency has been a major theme and focus. The measures come after a number of West Hartford residents demanded last year, during the budget season, that the Board of Education increase its transparency and accountability to the public.
"A lot of really positive things have happened this year in response to [last year's painful budget process]. We've achieved much greater transparency, much greater openness, and communication regarding the budget process was much clearer. It's been a really productive process," Putterman said.
Commenting before the vote, board member Clare Kindall praised the West Hartford public school administration for exercising "good fiscal prudence" by identifying a portion of the extra funds in September 2007 and maintaining the funds over the course of the school year.