The current school budget has a $171,000 deficit half way through the fiscal year, but Westport school officials are not worried about the shortfall yet.
The Westport Board of Education will discuss the quarterly financial report, which shows the shortfall, during its meeting at 8 p.m. on Tuesday.
The benefits, property services and other purchased services accounts is where the school budget carries a shortfall, including over $124,000 in other purchased services. Additionally, there is a surplus of about $47,000 in the salary account.
Westport Schools Superintendent Elliott Landon said school officials don’t see it as a “real deficit.”
It is only halfway through the fiscal year, he said, and school officials have to assume all of the money in each account will be spent.
“We have to encumber our accounts as if we are spending all of the money,” he said. “This report is not as reflective of how we’re doing as the third quarter and obviously at the end of the year.”
There have not been any cutbacks on other areas of the budget, he said, because school officials do not feel that is necessary at this time.
In a memo to Landon that was sent to the school board, Nancy Harris, assistant superintendent for business, wrote two of the biggest concerns are utilities and special education costs.
“The greatest unknown at this time is the final cost of heating fuel and electricity, which creates a potential deficit of $58,697,” she wrote. “The range of the deficit depends on our actual oil and electricity consumption, which will be impacted by the winter temperatures, the use of our buildings and the experience of the new electrical rate phase in.”
The tuition account, which covers the cost of special education out-of-district placements, is running a deficit of $201,974, Harris wrote, with the costs racking up to $1.9 million for the placements and $292,171 for transportation.
A state Special Education Excess Cost Grant, however, will help cover some of the special education costs, she wrote.
School officials expect to receive $730,000 in state grants to cover the costs, she wrote, but school officials should receive $811,000.
State officials have not been fully funding the grant for the last several years, Harris wrote, and school officials are only receiving 90 percent of what they should receive.
