News that the Oakland Intermediate School District (ISD) will soon be distributing around $20.5 million in special education funds has spread like wild fire. But just what does this mean for Oxford Area Community Schools?
According to Assistant Superintendent Ron Franey, not much.
“We really didn’t benefit from these additions because of where we began with for funding from them,” he stated.
This year Oxford Schools received $1,648,959 from Oakland Schools for special education. This is about $170,352 less than the previous school year and 1.69 percent of the total amount Oakland Schools is spending on special education.
Franey said the amount Oxford receives each year is based upon how much the district spends on special education. The 1.69 percent is figured by taking the total amount Oxford spends, combining it with those amounts spent by other districts, and then figuring what percentage of that total amount Oxford has contributed.
“They’ve used different formulas over the years to determine the amount,” Franey informed school board members at their last regular meeting. “This is the one they are using now.”
This past May, Oxford administrators learned that Oakland Schools would be disbursing monies from fund balances for both 2003 and 2004. In 2003, the ISD had a fund balance of $6.5 million, and for 2004 the district is predicting a similar amount, or around $5 million.
“We were not aware of the surplus at all,” said Franey. “We didn’t know about them even during the bond issue.”
“I think it’s a bit excessive to have fund balances that large,” he told board members.
Oxford Schools will be receiving an additional $110,210 from 2003 and $74,953 for 2004. Both amounts are based on the 1.69 percent and raised the overall special education total to $1,834,122.
In addition to these fund surpluses, Oakland Schools will also be distributing funds from $9 million that were inappropriately spent on a county-wide fiber optic network.
“It was free for us and everybody wanted it done,” said Franey. “They’d talked for quite a while about how to fund it, but I was never aware they paid for this out of special education. They never said anything about that at any meeting I was at.”
Oxford will receive $134,915 in new funds from this disbursement; bringing the final amount for special education to $1,969,037. This is $149,726 over the amount received last year.
Franey stated that whether Oxford has the additional money or not really does not affect the way the district’s special education programs run.
“If a student requires a service, we provide that service, whether we’ve been given the money or not,” he said. “We address the needs for programs and staffing as we go along.”
Like many districts across the county, Oxford Schools was also unhappy to learn that the monies from the recent vocational education millage must be spent among Oakland Schools four technical campuses and not within the districts themselves.
“We wanted the money to use for our own internal vocational programs,” said Franey. “We were looking forward to offering some expanded programs or different programs to the students.”
Oxford Schools worked with other districts around the county to help pass the special millage, and, according to Franey, administrators did not learn that the money could not be spent locally until shortly after voter approval.
“We were under the impression we could use the funds locally,” he stated. “But I didn’t plan any of that money in the budget because I knew shortly after the millage passed we wouldn’t be receiving any of that funding.”
Franey also hasn’t placed any of the additional special education funds from the $9 million disbursement into the budget yet. Oakland Schools announced they would be distributing the money sometime in December, but the funds won’t be included in Oxford Schools’ budget until the school board considers revisions in the winter.
“(Oakland Schools) want to end a lot of this quickly,” Franey said to Oxford board trustees. “They want to get this money out.”