NYM School puts focus on small class sizes
News | Published on October 31, 2023 at 4:02pm GMT+0000 | Author: Tucker Henderson
0NYM School audit shows slight deficit spending
By Chad Koenen
Publisher
A commitment to maintaining smaller class sizes, and an end to much of the additional COVID-19 funding, forced the New York Mills School District to tap into its reserves a bit last year.
During its regularly scheduled meeting last week, the NY Mills School Board received its annual year-end audit from Jack Kuppich of Eide Bailey. Last year expenses exceeded revenue in the general fund by about $159,000.
Over the past few years the school district has made a commitment to decrease class sizes, especially in the elementary school. NY Mills School Superintendent Blaine Novak said the school district is seeing the benefit of decreasing class sizes, but also cautioned that doing so has affected the school district’s reserves a bit as well.
“We knew we probably couldn’t sustain such small class sizes and it came at a cost, but we made that commitment for the time being,” said Novak. “If you talk to families and teachers who work with the teachers they are seeing the results in the smaller class sizes too.”
Last year total expenses at the school district were $10,041,916, while total revenue was $9,919,435. That left the school district dipping into its reserves to cover the approximately $159,000 shortfall in revenue over expenses.
However, Kuppich said NY Mills was not unique in having expenses exceed revenues last year as that was the case with quite a few school districts across the region. One of the big drivers behind that shortfall came from the ending of additional COVID-19 funding that schools utilized to hire additional staff and cover rising expenses. He said the school board should keep the information in mind for future planning so it isn’t caught off guard next year.
“That’s something to keep in mind for the district over the next few years,” he said of the decreasing reserve fund. “It has been common for many school districts to have a fund balance go down in the past few years.”
Kuppich also said the school district fell just below its policy of maintaining six weeks of expenses in its unassigned fund balance, but the school district maintains a healthy reserve account it can tap into if needed in the future. Currently the school district has $609,000 in its unassigned fund, which is about half of the school district’s target. However, Kuppich said the amount the school district would like to keep in its reserves is entirely up to the school district and what it feels comfortable with maintaining.
“For the fund balances, there is really no right or wrong answer,” he said. Everyone is a little bit different. It is just what you are comfortable having.”
Following the audit presentation, Novak said the school board should be aware that the district deficit spent last year and the two sides will get together to continue to watch the school finances moving forward.
The audit also found that student enrollment grew in 2023 to 774 students in grades K-12. That is up six students from the year before and 69 students since 2014. Novak part of the reason for the increase was due to several smaller classes graduating high school and being replaced by larger class sizes in the elementary school. He said projections show that the enrollment at NY Mills School is expected to peak in 2027.
The larger enrollment is a welcomed trend at NY Mills School as student enrollment is the big driver for state funding.
In other news
• Received the following donations: $250 from the East Otter Tail County Ag Society to the FFA for $250 and $600 from the NY Mills Lions Club to the Close Up program.
• Received a grant from the First Congregational United Church of Christ, Samson Family Trust, for $4,000 to the kindergarten and first grades.
• Approved the following appointments: Mike Bauck as an assistant girls basketball coach, Jared Hotakainen as an assistant wrestling coach, Joan Nelson as a paraprofessional for two days per week, Rebecca Motzko as a paraprofessional, Leah Roberts-Veazie as a speech coach and Michael Thomas as a cleaner.
• Accepted the following resignations: Creedun Dunrud as girls basketball c-squad coach, Marsha Maki as business manager and Tanya Erickson as kitchen staff.