District 1 board OKs $50 million budget
The Yuma Elementary District 1 governing board approved a smaller budget for the 2012-2013 school year.
At a special meeting Monday, the district budget was adopted at $50.2 million compared to last year's budget of $51.3 million.
Chief Financial Officer Kerry Jones said that the district has seen a 20.5 percent reduction in its overall budget over the past six years totalling $11,670,199.
Jones said that this decrease in funding has been a direct reflection from cuts made at the state level.
When looking at state funding for K-12 education, he said that during fiscal year 2008 Arizona's education budget was $5,120,387,900 and in 2013 it's $4,075,085,400. For per-pupil funding the state saw a 22.8 percent reduction in dollars, Jones added, as Arizona went from $4,901 per student in fiscal year 2008 down to $3,780 per student in fiscal year 2013.
When looking at the Maintenance and Operations budget for District 1, he explained that 78 percent of its budget is used for salaries and benefits, 14 percent is used for purchased services such as occupational therapy and registration costs, supplies is 3 percent and utilities is 5 percent.
Jones went on to say that the district has seen a jump in classroom instruction dollars in its M&O budget by $2,604,434 totalling an almost 12 percent increase.
The maintenance and operations budgets increased from $42.2 million to $44.5 million but capital outlay funds went down by $3.2 million and soft capital funds also decreased by $25,892 (from $544,883 to $518,991).
In other meeting news, the board OK'd a new administrative position.
Luciano Munoz was approved as the new director of human resources and Ronald Schepers the new director of transportation.
Munoz previously served as an administrative assistant to human resources at Somerton School District and Schepers served as the director of transportation at Renton School District in Washington.
Sarah Womer can be reached at swomer@yumasun.com or 539-6858. Find her on Facebook at Facebook.com/YSSarahWomer or on Twitter at @YSSarahWomer.
