The Everett Common Council Monday night approved a pair of transfers from the city’s free cash accounts to make up expected shortfalls in the School department budget, for the current fiscal year.
The first vote was to transfer $591,187.00 from the Free Cash I(Budgetary Fund Balance) to the Everett School Department Salary Account to fund a determined shortfall in the School Department’s Fiscal Year 2013 Budget.
According to the school department, this shortfall was created when the system determined that a number of students in charter schools had erroneously been charged to Everett. The mistake in assigning the students to Everett resulted in a corresponding reduction to the Everett schools from the state aid formula (known as the cherry sheet), which caused the city to be under the state foundation budget.
Essentially, the state requires cities and towns to fund their school systems at a predetermined “foundation” level, in order to maintain access to state funding. Once the adjustments to Everett’s school population were made, the city was required to contribute more to its bottom-line school budget.
The second transfer was for the amount of $779,900.00, also from Free Cash to the Everett School Department Salary Account to fund the Medicaid reimbursement. When explaining the reasons for the need for this transfer, the schools cited that a number of teachers on long term leave, due to illness, had created the deficit.