School treasurer says finances looking good at year’s halfway mark

By Sarah Einselen

Inquirer Reporter

Galion schools trea­surer Linda Kid­well said dis­trict funds were in good shape at the reg­u­lar meet­ing of the Galion Board of Edu­ca­tion held Thurs­day, Jan. 12. Decem­ber was the halfway mark in the school’s fis­cal year. By the end of that month, dis­trict rev­enues were above bud­geted and expenses under bud­get, she said.

Total year-to-date rev­enues and other financ­ing sources came in at just over $8 mil­lion, about $64,300 more than had been bud­geted for this point in the year. The extra came about equally from gen­eral prop­erty taxes, tan­gi­ble per­sonal prop­erty taxes and the catchall fund for other oper­at­ing revenue.

Expen­di­tures and other financ­ing uses came in $101,600 under bud­get, at about $8.2 mil­lion. The pur­chased ser­vices fund was the one most under budget.

Most of the month’s receipts and expenses were normal.

The only expen­di­ture that was out of the ordi­nary in Decem­ber was $103,581 from the per­ma­nent improve­ment fund used to buy 149 Mac­Book Air lap­tops for staff mem­bers. The board is look­ing into pur­chas­ing Mac­Books for stu­dents too, as part of the one-to-one com­puter pro­gram it’s inter­ested in launching.

The school board thanked com­mu­nity mem­bers for sev­eral dona­tions received over the last month.

A num­ber of fam­i­lies donated a total of $1,170 for a new schol­ar­ship, the Den­nis E. Jones Ten­nis Schol­ar­ship. Kid­well said that either prin­ci­pal or inter­est from that fund could be used to fund the scholarship.

The Galion Kiwa­nis Club donated $1,000 for musi­cal instru­ment repair. The Come Home to Galion Parade donated $200 to the high school band. An anony­mous donor gave $550 to the var­sity boys’ bas­ket­ball program.

Sev­eral musi­cal instru­ments were also donated. Chuck and Mau­reen Neal donated a Bb clar­inet val­ued at $500, Lynne Foust donated a Bundy student-level flute and an Arm­strong flute together val­ued at $600, Jim Hover gave a Holton col­le­giate trom­bone with a Holton 1 mouth­piece together val­ued at $350 and the Galion Music Par­ents gave a 24-inch cham­pi­onship pearl march­ing bass drum with case and car­rier, all together a value of $827.

“As always we appre­ci­ate all dona­tions,” said board pres­i­dent Den­nis Long. “They’re a real help.” The ele­men­tary school band has over 50 stu­dents enrolled this year, said school super­in­ten­dent Kathy Jen­ney, and the chal­lenge is find­ing instru­ments for all of them.

The board approved amended esti­mated resources and appro­pri­a­tions for the remain­der of the 2012 fis­cal year, end­ing June 30. It also approved a $600 Book Talk Go Mobile ITSCO grant, returned a $32,000 advance that had been trans­fered from the gen­eral fund to the Safe and Drug Free Sus­tain­abil­ity Grant fund and approved a $4,488.13 Then-and-Now cer­tifi­cate for edu­cat­ing a stu­dent at Flat Rock res­i­den­tial facility.

The school board will meet again at 6:30 p.m. Thurs­day, Feb. 9, in the mid­dle school com­puter lab. The pub­lic is encour­aged to attend.

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Jan 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.