This week, as we continue our assignment education iTeam investigation on West Virginia’s school system, we keep our focus on finances.
A West Virginia Auditor's Office report showed some county school boards with tens of millions of dollars in the bank at the end of the 2017 fiscal year.
Some viewers have reached out to us, asking why every single school dollar isn't being spent every year on students, but, county superintendents and treasurers say it's vitally important to keep at least some money in the bank.
When the West Virginia Auditor found that the state's county boards of education had a combined $758 million in cash and investments at the end of fiscal year 2017, some questions were raised. In an era of dwindling revenues, rising costs and ever-increasing demands, how could a county school system like Kanawha have $72.5 million in the bank on June 30, 2017?
The county's superintendent said there is much more going on financially than just socking away millions for a rainy day.
“Each year we can have a carry over, but we do that because if we weren't careful and watched our dollars carefully then we'd have to take that money out of our general budget. If we had to take it out of the general budget then that would mean a lot of layoffs and a lot of programs for our students and we can't afford to do that,” Kanawha County Superintendent Ron Duerring said.
Cabell County was also flush as fiscal year 2017 ended, with $57 million in its accounts. But Cabell County’s superintendent agrees with Duerring that responsible money management doesn't allow him to spend that balance down to zero each year.
“We do have a fund balance that affords us the opportunity to invest in new schools, maintain our schools, be able to make sure that we have the latest heating and air conditioning systems for comfort. We can add athletic facilities. We are able to invest in single points of entry for safe school entrances. And we are able to do that because we've managed our money in a very responsible way. The fact of the matter is when we go to balance our budget every year we want to make sure that we're not digging into those reserves,” Cabell County Superintendent Ryan Saxe said.
Raleigh County's balance as the fiscal year closed was very similar to Cabell's. With a little more than $56.5 million at its disposal, Raleigh County had the state's third-highest surplus. But the system's treasurer said there are long-term plans which require a healthy bank balance in order to provide the education students deserve while stretching taxpayer dollars as far as possible.
“We try to keep a level of reserves on hand so that we can meet an emergency, should an emergency happen, should a building burn down or an HVAC system go out or for some reason a school gets condemned, that we could meet that challenge. It's not good to run a system as close to the wire that you can. I mean, we try to plan our projects out. We have a plan in place each year of what projects we want to achieve as a system. And then we try to plan accordingly for the future knowing that we've got some buildings in this county anywhere from 50 to 80-plus years old that are going to need some attention,” Raleigh County Treasurer Darrin Butcher said.
Duerring said while the amounts are greater, managing the school system's budget in many ways is similar to how you handle your household's finances. You have to make sure you have enough held back to take care of day-to-day expenses while also keeping enough in reserve to take care of emergencies and move the system forward as new needs and costs are identified.
“The criticism comes because they think every dollar, every dime and every penny should be spent in the kids within the school system. But in order to make that happen and give them the quality of education we need to have that carry over to be able to do that. And so, throughout the year we're watching our spending. Again, I told you before we do zero-based budgeting. If we don't get the bang for the buck for our product, our program, then we do away with it. We watch our purchases so that we don't have to hurt our general budget and weaken the education that we give our students. And I think in any other organization, in any other business you would be praised by having that and re-investing it back into your organization. It's the same thing in education. You can see right here we re-invested that back into the educational system in order to have a sound budget so that we can continue to educate our kids. But I think people take the attitude, well you shouldn't have that money. But it we didn't and we had to take that amount out of the general budget I can assure you that we'd be making huge cuts to personnel and to programs for our kids in the schools,” Duerring said.
We've committed to exploring many different aspects of West Virginia's school system this entire year. We're looking at grades, teaching methods, money, students and their challenges. It's all designed to find out how we can improve the quality of education from where we are to where we need to be.
You are invited to participate in our journey. If you know of an outstanding situation in a school or something which needs to be fixed we'd love to hear from you. Just send us a message or call at 304-345-4115 and we'll do our best to follow up as we keep the spotlight on trying to make tomorrow better for not only our young people, but for all of us.