The Derby Public School district has a $100,000 surplus for the current year.
The extra money was announced at the Board of Education meeting last week — minutes after the Board of Education voted to approve program and staff cuts for next fiscal year.
The surplus comes because of a combination of four things, according to Superintendent Stephen Tracy:
- The district was able to reduce its electricity use at the middle and high schools (although the savings are not as much as they had projected last year)
- The departure of a couple of “high-cost” special education students
- A decline in the number of unemployment claims
- A cost decrease for health care premiums
The $100,000 extra has to be used by the end of the fiscal year — June 30 — or the district will lose the money.
That means it can’t be used to fill in the gaps the district expects next fiscal year.
Pamela Mangini, the schools business manager, presented the Board of Education with a list of suggested items to spend the money on — including $58,000 for Internet server updates at the district’s four schools.
Mangini and District IT Director Brian Dunnuck said the current internet system routes all connections through the high school, resulting in slow or faulty internet connections at the other schools.
The new system would include purchasing new servers and would create a balance where each school had the same internet speed, Dunnuck said.
The rest of the money will be split between the four schools, special education costs, maintenance supplies and dues for two professional organizations — the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, and the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents.
The Internet improvements and dues were originally in next year’s budget, but were cut when the district didn’t receive its total request.
In May, Derby approved a $15.4 million school budget that left the Derby Public Schools with about $485,000 less than school officials said they needed to operate in 2011 – 2012.
On June 7, the Board of Education found ways to make up for that $485,000 — including eliminating a maintenance position, a security guard and reducing some teaching positions to part-time. Click here to read a previous story on the cuts.
Some of the cuts included supplies at schools. Each school will submit a list of the supplies that were cut from the 2011 – 2012 budget, and Mangini will order them with some of the surplus money this year, Tracy said.
Mayor Anthony Staffieri said he hopes the district uses the extra money to purchase needed items, such as textbooks.
“If they do have a surplus, what they should do is go through their whole budget and look to see what supplies are needed,” Staffieri said. “Every year we hear that they don’t have textbooks. If they need textbooks, this is another opportunity to buy them.”
