Money hiding in the financial books of the DeKalb County School District might have been used to avert untold misery when the budget was cut last summer.
Superintendent Michael Thurmond, who succeeded Cheryl Atkinson in February, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that DeKalb failed to tap millions of dollars in potential revenue last year, when Atkinson oversaw a historic $78 million in cuts.
Thurmond has cuts in mind too, but they’re in areas like legal fees and central office personnel rather than the classroom. Because of money he found, he is even proposing an expanded budget for fiscal year 2014, which starts in July. Among his recommendations: spending $3 million to undo one of the furlough days imposed by Atkinson.
“The reality is, a lot of folk lost their jobs that didn’t have to,” Thurmond said. “These funds were available last year.”
The new money is in two categories: collected and should have been collected.
In the collected category is $5.8 million for after-school programs. The money was gathered centrally and was supposed to be distributed to schools, but pooled in an account for an untold amount of time, Thurmond said.
Other revenue streams might have been missed for years, Thurmond said. For instance, DeKalb was failing to collect all it could for administering federal grants to feed students federally subsidized meals. The system caught this soon enough to bill $500,000 for the current fiscal year, but expects to bill $1 million next year.
The new money has contributed to a projected surplus of $9.2 million that can roll into next year’s budget.
Next year, DeKalb is projecting another $17.5 million from new or previously untapped sources.
One of the biggest is $4 million expected from the state for educating students with extra needs. Georgia gives local districts a subsidy for each student, and provides a supplemental amount for those who need more help. DeKalb has provided more service to non-English speakers and special education and gifted students than it has documented and billed for, which Thurmond said he plans to change.
“We haven’t been doing it systematically, which has resulted in the potential loss of millions of dollars,” he said.
Altogether, the new budget adds $26.7 million in projected revenue to what was expected just a week ago. Thurmond is asking the school board to bankroll nearly half and put the rest into a variety of programs — some, including new financial monitoring tools, that were recommended by the district’s accreditation agency.
Parent Donna Priest-Brown is angry about the untapped money. Last summer, while scrounging for cash, the school board almost cut buses for magnet schools. That was stressful for the south DeKalb mom because she would have had to spend up to two hours a day shuttling one of her sons back and forth to Chamblee Middle School.
Meanwhile, ongoing furloughs and pay freezes contributed to what Priest-Brown sees as academic decline at her other son’s school, Arabia Mountain High, as teachers who could leave did.
“They’ve lost a lot of good teachers,” she said. “I cannot believe this money fell through the cracks. Where was the oversight?”
About the Author
