Fox C-6 officials have adopted a new budget for next school year, but the results of a special election to be held in August could change it.
The school district will ask voters on Aug. 8 to approve a tax levy increase of 92.07 cents per $100 assessed valuation.
Fox Board of Education members approved a budget last week that does not include revenue from the proposed tax increase, which is called Proposition I and stands for invest in our students, our school and our community.
If the increase is approved, it would generate an additional $11.2 million during the upcoming fiscal year, which runs from July 1 through June 30, 2024, district officials have said.
“Once our voters head to the polls on Aug. 8 to vote on Prop I, we will have a better idea of the plans we will need to make moving forward,” Fox Superintendent Paul Fregeau said.
If the proposition passes, the school district’s tax levy would increase from $4.2617 per $100 assessed valuation to $5.1824 per $100 assessed valuation, said chief financial officer John Stewart, who is retiring on June 30.
Amy Vandevender will take over the role on July 1.
The current levy for the district’s operating fund is $3.8716 per $100 assessed valuation, and with the proposed tax increase, it would rise to $4.7923 per $100 assessed valuation, Stewart said.
The district’s overall tax levy also includes 39.01 cents per $100 assessed valuation for the debt service fund levy, which would remain the same because the increase would be for the operating levy only, he said.
If the tax increase is approved, a district resident with a home valued at $200,000 by the Jefferson County Assessor’s Office would pay an additional $349.86 per year, Stewart said.
District residents with a home the Assessor’s Office values at $200,000 currently pay a total of $1,619.45 in real estate taxes a year.
“The revenues (from the proposed tax increase), if it is passed, would start posting in January,” Fregeau said. “We would have to do a budget adjustment accordingly.”
According to the district’s Prop I website, foxc6.org/propi, additional funds from a proposed tax increase would be used to recruit and retain staff members, maintain a variety of courses and programs and continue to keep class size at or below Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) recommendations.
Without the tax levy increase, Fox officials said the district would need to reduce the number of teachers it employs, leading to larger class sizes, and it would likely have to reduce the number of athletic programs and other activities offered to students.
One of the reasons the Fox district needs additional revenue is because district officials expect to see a decrease of $5 million to $6 million in state funding, according to school board documents.
The drop in state funding is expected because DESE has indicated the state will start using actual student attendance rate to calculate how much funding it will provide school districts during the 2024-2025 fiscal year instead of using the pre-pandemic weighted average daily attendance as it has done since the 2020-2021 school year.
“Fox C-6 has some financial challenges ahead, as we look at the state funding cliff and rising costs,” Fregeau said.
2023-2024 budget
Overall, the newly adopted budget for the 2023-2024 school year calls for the district to spend $169,367,385 and bring in $146,247,357 in total revenue, which includes funds for operating costs, capital improvements and the district’s debt service, according to budget documents.
That’s a deficit of $23,120,08, but of that $19.2 million will be spent on capital improvement projects to be funded with revenue from a $40 million bond issue voters approved in June 2020.
The newly adopted budget calls for the district to spend $136,696,556 in operating costs, which includes employees’ salaries and other day-to-day expenses, and to bring in $133,322,357 to cover those operating costs, a $3,374,199 deficit.
The Fox district will be able to absorb that deficit because it is beginning the fiscal year with $32,896,761 in operating reserve funds after projecting that the reserve would be $20,012,628.
“Our budget is built on projections, but the actual spending was more conservative than anticipated,” Vandevender said.
The district expects to end the 2023-2024 fiscal year with $29,522,562 in operating reserve funds.
The district’s most expensive budget item is employee salaries which, if the district is fully staffed, will cost an estimated $87,780,292 for next school year. That’s $2,860,462 more than the $84,919,830 expected to be spent on salaries this school year.
Fox has about 1,180 employees when it is fully staffed, district officials said.
The district is paying more for salaries next year because teacher salaries will increase by an average of 2.35 percent and support staff employees, including bus drivers and custodians, will receive an 85 cent per hour raise on July 1.
The district eliminated two assistant principal positions and 27 teaching positions for next school year by not filling some positions vacated by employees who resigned or retired. By reducing those jobs, the district will save about $2.4 million, school officials have said.
In addition, the budget shows the district reducing total expenditures for its buildings by $250,000.
“I’m happy our projections panned out the way we communicated to the community about the impact of our reductions,” Fregeau said. “Hopefully, we can become fully staffed to properly serve our buildings, and I have the utmost confidence we will have a well-managed budget moving forward.”
Building improvements
Eight of Fox’s 17 schools will receive additional money for small capital improvement projects during the 2023-2024 fiscal year, Fregeau said before the board adopted the budget.
He also said the other nine schools will receive funds in the 2024-2025 budget.
Seckman High School will receive $50,000, and Antonia and Ridgewood middle schools each will receive $30,000, as will Guffey, Lone Dell, Hodge, Rockport Heights and Simpson elementary schools, for improvements like painting.
Fregeau said that alternating the years schools receive additional capital improvement funds is an effort to make sure fundraisers held throughout the school year more directly benefit students.
“I will use the example of Seckman Middle. The students and parents did a great job of raising funds with great participation in a color run,” he said. “They had this big celebration and raised $30,000, and that should have gone inside the building more directly to kids. Instead, it is used for painting metal outside.”
“We are looking at a $150 million minimum of capital needs. It (the money allocated for the building capital improvements) will be barely a drip in the bucket, but it will make a big difference for the little things that can make a building look better.”
The Fox school board voted 6-0 on June 20 to approve the new budget. President April Moeckel was absent from the meeting.