PCS - Financial Snapshot 2013-14

When I was PCS Board president, I had the superintendent create a Financial Snapshot (2010-11) of the district because I wanted to make school finance more comprehensible. In addition, year-after-year at NYS School Boards Conventions, Board of Education members were told that they cannot oversee the fiscal health of a school district unless they know the major expenses facing their districts, how these expenses have changed in recent years, and how they are expected to change going forward. Therefore, I requested a document outlining the top five expenses faced by the the PCSD. They were:

#1 Salaries

#2 Benefits

#3 Special Ed.          (NYS aid received at 63% which means PCS paid 37% of cost)

#4 Debt Service      (NYS aid received at 91% which means PCS paid 9% of cost) 

#5 Transportation  (NYS aid received at 90% which means PCS paid 10% of cost)

(Aid percentages can vary year-to-year. For the current year, Debt Service is aided at 82%.)

 (At the time, I had Athletics and Extracurriculars added to the bottom of the list just to make the point that when it is time to discuss cuts, these are not areas that will save the district any significant amount of money and they are areas that hurt students substantially when cut).

 When NYS pays a huge percentage of any large expense, it is very important to show the cost to PCS, the cost to NYS, and the total cost (which most of the public and inexperienced Board members would likely think is paid locally.)

When I recently asked for an update of the Financial Snapshot to reflect anticipated costs for the 2013-14 school year, Supt. Brady did provide the information - something I appreciate because it is in the interest of the BOE, employees, and the public to understand the major expenses faced by the PCSD and the percentage of those expenses paid by PCS vs. the percentage paid by NYS.

PCS: A Financial Snapshot for 2013-14

(approximate costs to be paid by the PCSD)
$ 8,900,000...................Salaries
$ 8,200,000...................Benefits
       This $8.2 million cost is made up of:
           (approximately)
           $ 5.2 million..........Health Insurance Premiums
           $ 1.2 million..........TRS (Teachers' Retirement System)
           $    717,000...............Social Security
           $    598,000...............ERS (Employee Retirement System for CSEA)
           $    181,000...............Administration of Health Ins. Plan
           $    125,000...............Unemployment Insurance
           $    101,500...............Workers' Compensation Ins.
           $      27,500...............Workers' Compensation Administration
           $        5,600...............Flex Plan and 403b fees

$ 1,500,000..........Special Education (Total cost is $3.9 million: NYS pays $2.4M & PCS pays $1.5M)  
$       558,000..............Debt Service (Total cost is $3.1 million: NYS pays $2,542,000 & PCS pays $558K)
$     (minus) 7,000..............Transportation (Total cost is $1,068,000: NYS pays $1,075,000 & PCS gains $7,000 -anticipated aid is higher than anticipated cost)
$     270,000..................Athletics
$          53,000...................Extracurricular Activities

An analysis of the change in financial snapshots between 2010-11 and the current year will be part of the next blog posting. To see the Financial Snapshot from 2010-11, go to...

http://thissideofthetable.blogspot.com/2012/06/pcs-financial-snapshot.html