Two schools are recommended financial penalties, while three waiver requests past cash limits were approved at a school finance oversight meeting.
The Agar-Blunt-Onida, Lead-Deadwood, and Hill City school districts were tentatively approved for waiver requests that went beyond state cash limits, but other districts saw penalties recommended for their last financial year.
This all took place at the latest School Finance and Accountability Board meeting.
These waiver requests are designed to ensure school districts are both using their allocated tax dollars responsibly and not over-budgeting.
One of the penalized districts is Frederick Area. Shauna Severson is the district business manager.
“This was not a result of over-budgeting or mismanagement," Severson said. "It was a combination of a few unanticipated factors that affected both our expenditures and our revenues. The big one is our ag program. We launched a new agriculture program this year to expand our (career and technical education) offerings, and it’s something we’ve been discussing here at board meetings for a couple years since I’ve started. While we anticipated significant startup costs like classrooms, the shop, the expenditures just didn’t occur at the pace that we projected them to.”
Alongside Frederick, the Miller School District also faces a recommended penalty. Eric Norden is the district superintendent.
“We’ve had staffing vacancies just recently," Norden said "We were adding an art teacher program, we did get that filled that this year, we also added a second grade position to help split a class up. Our biggest problem has been after the COVID years we had a fire right at the end of that process. That was a $12 million disruption to everything that we’ve had going on. Within that, we haven’t really had any consistent or regular spending.”
The legislative appropriations committee will have the last word on recommendations. That committee is slated to meet in the capitol alongside the budget address Dec. 2.
