Neighbor News
West Islip School District posts a $5.2MM Surplus in 2020
Surplus due to $7.2MM in lower expenditures.
As the West Islip School District embarks on its 2022 budget process, it’s worth noting that the District generated a $5.2MM surplus, before internal transfers, in its 2020 General Fund’s fiscal year. The District’s annual report for the year ended June 30, 2020 shows revenues of $123.7MM compared to expenditures of $118.5MM. The surplus was used to increase reserves leaving the unassigned fund balance virtually unchanged at $5.0MM . The General Fund's unassigned fund balance represents prior years' excess revenues over expenditures and is limited to 4% of the 2020/2021 budget. While this may be considered “old news”, it’s the latest and most meaningful reporting available to the public as the District, like other districts and municipalities, doesn’t budget by month or quarter but only by entire year and therefore the reporting through January 2021 doesn’t provide an accurate indication if the district is running a surplus or deficit. The full year actual results are available to the public in the form of the annual report which is normally finalized sometime around October.
The $5.2MM surplus resulted from lower expenditures of $7.2MM primarily due to the following:
- Employee Benefits of $2.1MM primarily due to retirement and health insurance
- Special Ed and BOCES Occupational Education of $2.1MM and an additional $0.6MM of regular school instruction
- Transportation of $1.0MM
- General Support of $0.8MM
The favorable impact of lower expenditures was partially offset by lower revenues of $2.1MM primarily due to a shortfall in state aid. While the annual report mentions the pandemic, it does so in very general terms with no mention of a specific financial impact to the General Fund. It is worth noting that that the adopted budget of $125.9MM was increased primarily for encumbrances of $1.1MM being carried over from the prior year resulting in a final budget of $127.0MM.
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The 2020 surplus calls into question how the current year’s results will fare as the 2021 budget declined only $1.5MM from the 2020 budget which we now see had artificially high expenditures. Furthermore the 2021 decrease in budgeted expenditures wasn't in General Support or Instruction but rather in lower Debt Service. It is very possible that there will be additional opportunities for lower expenses when the 2021 year is finalized.