School Business Director Defends Year-End Transfers And Financial Reporting

By Laurie Borst

The Board of Education this week requested its Business Director Ron Bienkowski to review his presentation to the Board of Finance last week when he was closely questioned about year-end transfers and financial matters for the school district.

“One of the things that people need to understand, as I explained to the finance board, is that the final set of transfers are really just housekeeping transfers,” Mr Bienkowski told the board at its September 18 meeting. “At that point, whatever decisions you make are made to balance out accounts in total.

“In that final set of transfers, there was a $5,000 transfer for technology equipment. The administration felt that there was a balance of approximately $5,000 in the custodial and maintenance equipment account that was not going to be spent,” Mr Bienkowski continued. “[Recently] the board wrestled with a $300,000 reduction to the Head O’ Meadow and Middle Gate obsolete equipment replacement program. The comment was made that since SmartBoards were being donated to the schools, it was important to give them the technology to at least be able to operate those SmartBoards. So that was a minor purchase of technology to make those SmartBoards work.”

Some finance board members have called for greater detail in financial reporting by the school district, but Mr Bienkowski defended the level of detail of the school board’s financial report when compared to the town’s financial reporting.

“It’s interesting that that comparison was made because if you compare the detail of the town’s report which is reviewed by the Board of Finance, I think our financial report is far more detailed than the town’s financial report,” Mr Bienkowski said. “Theirs is a departmental report, which lists the various departments — highway, selectmen, etc. You can’t find in there how much they’re spending for oil, how much they’re spending for electricity. Our report does break it down.”

The business director also addressed questions that had been raised in his presentation about the time lag in preparation of the financial report.

“Some people expect the financials [to be] presented sooner. I don’t know how much sooner the report can be produced. The end of the fiscal year is June 30 and within a month and a half the report was presented and reviewed by this board,” Mr Bienkowski explained. “Of course, this board must review any report before it is released. This is your primary charge, your primary duty. You do need to review the operations of the school district.”

Board Chair Elaine McClure asked Mr Bienkowski to discuss what happed to excess funds in the fuel oil account.

“We did buy the fuel oil at $1.97 a gallon instead of the $2.25 that the consortium communities purchased, that was the reason for the savings in the fuel oil account,” Mr Bienkowski stated. “We saved $82,000 in November and December. Transfers were made early in the year. That money was directed to the middle school auditorium.

“The budget is extremely dynamic. It’s always interesting to focus on the accounts that have a balance, but there are corresponding accounts that have deficits. We had a real problem with electricity account this year. We were about $55,000 in the hole. We had problems with tuition, about $45,000 in the hole. When you look at a budget, you can’t simply look at the balances and say some section of the budget included more money than it should have.

“Staffing needs have to be adjusted. Transportation needs came up tonight. We may have to add a school bus. We don’t have any easy source at this point. These are extremely dynamic things that are occurring now. There is going to be need to transfer money to different parts of the program,” Mr Bienkowski concluded.

Earlier in the meeting, Director of Transportation Tony DiLonardo reported that a number of buses on all three tiers are experiencing overcrowding.

Board member Paul Mangiafico requested specific numbers and video from the buses’ cameras showing the actual situation on each of the buses. Mr Mangiafico felt hard data was needed to quantify the need for considering funding more buses.

SAT Scores

In other business, the school board heard Assistant Superintendent Linda Gejda report on the SAT scores for the Class of 2007.

“The data show that performance has remained fairly consistent,” Dr Gejda said. “Participation is up this year from 78.6 percent in 2006 to 85.2 percent for the Class of 2007.”

The Class of 2007, with 366 students taking the SAT, posted mean scores of 534 on the reading portion, 538 on the math, and 533 on the writing portion. The state mean scores were 510 reading, 512 math, and 511 writing. The national average scores were 502 reading, 515 math, and 494 writing.

The Connecticut State Department of Education’s website offers a variety of charts showing the scores of high schools across the state as well as demographic breakdowns of the scores. Visit csde.state.ct.us/public/cedar/assessment/national/sat.htm to access this data.