Budget Deficit Shrinks For Batavia Public Schools

has some good budget news ... kind of.

The district has a smaller deficit than originally projected because delayed payments from the state finally arrived. Kris Monn, the district's assistant superintendent for finance, provided details on the deficit change in a presentation Tuesday to the Batavia School Board.

After several program and staff cuts, district initially projected a budget deficit of $2.47 million for this 2011-12 school year. But after receiving unexpected state reimbursement and aid checks, the current deficit projection is $1.048 million. This is about $1.4 million less than originally expected.

The district budgeted frugally during the 2010-11 school year, with the mentality that they might never receive state funding checks because of the state’s financial slump.

“Throughout the year, we were led to believe that we would no longer accrue the state money that wasn’t received,” Monn said. “If we thought we were going to get the money during that year, we showed it in our budget. If we thought it would come in a subsequent year, we didn’t show it in the budget.”

During the 2010-11 year, the school district was credited for all state-vouchered revenues, again accruing all expected payments. Due to the state’s lapse period, which allows Illinois to promise a payment in June and then pay out in December, the district only recently received the reimbursements and aid checks.

And this resulted in the unexpected deficit reduction.

Bittersweet Budget Change

Batavia School Board members took little comfort in the budget announcement.

While they were pleased to see a shrinking deficit, they did not appreciate having to approve and programming changes ( and ) that caused much turmoil in 2011.

The School Board made those tough decisions without knowing about the status of state funding. To see that some state money did finally arrive was bittersweet.

“I really struggle with everything we hear at the state level and everything going on," said Ron Link, school board president. "Even though (the state) supposedly vouches for these payments and we never have any idea when we will get them ... we still have to account for them."

Other board members were also frustrated with the state’s effect on the Batavia district's budget.

“We still have a $2.5 million deficit,” Board Member Jayne Resek said. “We’re just counting it differently.”

The budget shortfall would have been the same with or without the state money, Board Member Joe Purpura said.

“The reality is, even with those payments, we would have been running a very large deficit,” he said.

While the state’s late reimbursements affected the district’s budget, Link said the Board still takes responsibility for their budget cuts.

“We made decisions that affected everyone in the district," Link said. "But we can’t make good decisions when the information isn’t correct. If it’s going to be bad, let’s let it be bad and deal with it. But let’s not sugarcoat it so we come out to be asses while cutting this, this and this.”

Here are some ways to follow this story:

• Click on the "Keep me posted" button right below this article. You will receive an e-mail alert only when we run future updates on the school district budget or any budget cuts.

•  Sign up for our free daily e-mail newsletter at batavia.patch.com/newsletters. Enter an e-mail address there to receive our free daily newsletter for this site, which contains links to the latest stories, announcements and events.