New Trier District 203 Puts School Budget on Display

The New Trier Township High School District 203 on Monday night approved a tentative 2011-2012 budget, which calls for spending about 3 percent more than last year.

The $92.6 million spending plan is available for review and will be the topic of an Aug. 22 public hearing. The school board is scheduled to vote on a final budget that puts revenue at $92.7 million after that meeting.

Read more: Patch's coverage of New Trier Township High School District 203

While the tentative spending plan shows revenue outstripping spending by $124,000, it includes a contingency fund of more than $565,000 that is available for emergencies, said Donald Goers, the district's associate superintendent.

It also differs from the preliminary budget presented to the school board in June--with both the revenue and expenditure sides reduced, Goers said.

That’s because the new food service contract follows a different model that calls for the vendor to collect the money for meals and snacks and spends the funds to provide the service. Under the new approach, the contractor pays the district what amounts to a rental or licensing fee. In the past, the district collected the money and paid the food service contractor for its work.

As usual, property taxes make up the bulk of the district’s projected revenue. The budget expects $89.5 million in local revenue, including $85.3 million in property taxes. It estimates incoming state and federal funds at $3.2 million.

Property tax receipts are projected to rise about 3.6 percent, Goers said, with most of the increase due to the 2.7 increase allowed under the tax cap and a 0.3 percent increase in the property tax base. The rest comes from the Cook County accounting scheme to distribute property tax receipts, which pushes some of the previous year’s taxes into the current fiscal year, Goers said.

On the spending side, employee salaries and benefits make up the largest proportion of expenditures, accounting for $75.5 million of $92.6 million budget. Those two categories are projected to increase about 7 percent from what the district spent last year.

That includes a projected 4.5 percent increase in salaries--a number that could change when District 203 reaches an agreement with its teachers’ union. It also includes a more than 6 percent increase in the cost of benefits, due to rising costs for the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund and more employees choosing to take health insurance for themselves or for their families.

The school board approved the tentative budget without any discussion among the members.