Sept. School Board: 2025 Whitko Budget Public Hearing

LARWILL-With all school board members and the interim superintendent present, the Whitko Public Hearing on Capital Projects, Bus Replacement, and the 2025 Budget began at 6:30. Links of these documents on Whitko's website can be found by clicking their subjects in this paragraph. The 2025 Budget was not available (or at least I could not easily find it) there ( it says "Complete details of budget estimates by fund and/or department may be seen by visiting the office of this unit of government at 710 N SR 5 – Suite B, Larwill, Indiana."), but on Gateway Indiana, you can search for it.

Photo byMelany Love

Business Manager Lynn Leininger presented the information, though some parts were prior to his time in the business manager position. Leininger explained the upcoming loss of the ESSER funds (Federal Covid-related relief grants) at the end of the month and reviewed the amounts received and what they had been spent on to date. Over the last four years, Whitko received $3,362,198.65 total. The first amount of $251,000 was spent on vaccines, a $100 stipend to the employees who opted to receive vaccination, masks, extensive classroom cleaning throughout the buildings, and distance learning expenses. ESSER 2 ($968,000) was spent on paying a $1,000 stipend to all employees in the district for dealing with all the effects and problems with Covid, extensively upgrading ventilation across the corporation, the addition of air purifiers to the ventilators, and purchasing more cleaning supplies. ESSER 3 ($2,142,000) paid half of the students’ Chromebook fees for two years, a large amount towards the new ARC curriculum and the home learning program (about $700,000 total in curriculum), added a virtual nurse’s station at all buildings for students and employees, and hired a corporation nurse (Whitko had been using the Med Staff program prior), and added full time building substitute teachers, and paid NIET (teacher evaluation) payouts. With the funding ending, many of the programs funded by it will be phased out, but a few will be kept and funded another way now. Whitko intends to keep the corporation nurse, as it is both more beneficial and cheaper than the prior program, and they also plan to keep the full-time building substitutes, allowing them to earn the benefits and pay of first-year teachers, rather than the much lower daily sub pay. Though the school board has questioned the significant difference in pay between part-time and full-time subs, some teachers have said the position is necessary and beneficial to the students, as it means less pulling staff from other positions to act as subs when substitute teacher positions cannot be filled. 

The school’s funding breaks down into four categories: Education (which is funded by the state and depends on enrollment numbers; also includes some funding from special services), Operations (funded by tax levies and by transfers from the Education Fund), Debt Fund (only funded by tax levy), and Rainy Day Fund (funded by a permanent transfer in 2019 as a “just in case”). The estimated 2025 Budget is $20,995,400 for all four funds combined, with an estimated $7,975,138 in tax dollars raised.

The budget for the Education Fund will be $11,125,000. The Education Fund is funded by enrollment numbers (“the money follows the students”), and Whitko’s enrollment has seen a consistent drop over the last several years, from 1321 in the 2018/19 school year to 1132 this year. Though in prior years, Indiana kept increasing funding per student and Whitko was still “ahead,” this year will have $200,000 less money.

The budget for the Operations Fund will be $5,950,000, with a proposed tax levy of $3,975,138. Whitko plans to purchase two full-size buses and one mini bus this year, which will cost a total of $450,000. Unfortunately supply chain issues still exist as well, and they are still waiting for buses ordered last year. The bus replacement plan comes from the Operations Fund.

Capital Projects included a list of items that would need repaired and/or replaced over the next three years.

The budget for the Debt Service Fund will be $3,420,400, with the “advertised tax levy of $4 million, but it’s actually being adopted at $3,961,727,” said Leininger.

The Rainy Day Fund is budgeted $500,000 each year.

There was no public comment. The 2025 Budget will be voted on and adopted in October. 

As always, there are often meeting moments that are difficult to hear, so if I misquote anything, please let me know so I can fix it. I’m an independent writer, and I do the best I can to be as thorough as possible. If you appreciate my work, please consider making a NewsBreak account and subscribing; I need 100 subscribers with accounts in order to be monetized, so I currently do this for free.