JWP approves preliminary budget for 2024-25 fiscal year

The summer is in full swing, which means that the 2023-24 school year is behind us and it’s time to look forward to the 2024-25 school year.

The Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton (JWP) School Board approved both the 2024 revised budget and the 2025 preliminary budget. JWP Business Manager Wendy Dieker presented both topics to the school board at their June 17 meeting.

For the 2023-24 fiscal year’s revised budget, the district had $10.3 million in revenue and $9.9 million in expenditures, which was a 0.70% increase in revenue from the proposed budget and a 2.89% decrease in expenditures from the proposed budget.

The board approved the revised budget for last year and then discussed the preliminary budget for the upcoming school year. The preliminary budget needed to be approved by the end of the month in order for the district to spend money in July for the next fiscal year.

One main thing Dieker focused on with the preliminary budget was the pupil units. The district has historically used a conservative enrollment assumption to allow for potential decreases throughout the school year, and the preliminary budget uses an enrollment of 645 students to project revenue for the 2024-25 school year.

The 2025 senior class has the largest number of students in all of the grades next year with 72 students. The next highest class number is ninth graders with 58 students.

“Next year I would project that we would see a decrease in that number due to the large senior class that will be graduating next year,” JWP Superintendent Jeremy Erler said about the pupil units used to calculate the revenue.

The district’s total revenue will be $10.4 million for the preliminary budget, which is an increase of 1.56% from the 2023-24 revised budget. But the district received a 21.16% drop in federal aid, but this was to be expected.

“COVID funds will be expended by the end of this fiscal year so you’ll see a drop in that from last year’s budget to this year just because we won’t have those COVID funds,” Dieker said.

Dieker pointed out the community service fund, which includes community education and early childhood family education, and how the district will be spending more that they will be taking in for the fund. But Dieker assured the board that this is okay due to the district having funds in the balance and the district’s revenue for the fund will have a 4.49% increase from last year.

The school board approved the 2024-25 preliminary budget with a motion by Tim Burke and a second by Katie Cahill.