Rockwood School District Post-Bond Issue: What's Next?

With the failure of the $38.4 million no-tax rate increase Proposition S on April 2, many Rockwood School District taxpayers and parents were wondering what to envision for the district's financial future.

Rockwood's chief financial and legislative affairs officer Tim Rooney presented a financial overview to the Board of Education directors at Thursday evening's board meeting at Crestview Middle School in Ellisville.

Rooney said the budget target, as originally presented Dec. 6, 2012, was $10.9 million. The projected deficit was to be $5.1 million.

He said an additional $1 million was needed for maintenance, increasing the capital budget to $2 million. The budget for technology had been $2.5 million, particularly given the estimated needs for online testing for students, with all remaining items for another subtotal of $2.2 million.

"These future items would have been paid out of the bond issue, but now we'll have to go back to the original framework," said Rooney.

Rooney and Director of Technology Will Blaylock recommended the district hold a budget workshop to reconsider priorities for a budget target.

Rooney shared that Bond Oversight Committee members will continue to meet to discuss technology and maintenance needs, despite the failure of the bond. He said they already had had two meetings during which technology and maintenance needs were discussed.

He said the plan was to go through maintenance-related items to identify projects that are considered “Fix Just Prior to Failure.”

For technology items, the plan is to identify priority upgrades or replacements. Replacement of existing aging computers systems, broken projectors/SMART boards and network/server infrastructure requires $4 million annually, said Blaylock.

Committee members have agreed to review the projects and provide feedback. Rooney said the new project list and committee feedback will go to board directors for approval.

"I think we have all the information compiled, and during this final quarter of this school year is a good time to make adjustments. We currently have about $2 million to work with, and it doesn't go very far. We had to make tough decisions to get the budget down to $38.4 million," said Rooney.

At the Thursday meeting, he specifically referenced heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) units on Rockwood school roofs that are "well past their useful lives." He said they are looking at those units that are assessed with 75 percent change or greater that something may go wrong. "We'd like to replace those, if possible, because it can take 10 to 12 weeks to wait for replacements," he said.

Rooney said current projections show operating balances that are $16.7 million above the 18 percent target. In December, he said board directors chose to implement $7.2 million and any remaining deficit would be taken from fund balances.

"Some would suggest that we just go $16 million into the projects assembled for the $38 million bond list, but we've also said we don't want to make some of those cuts on that list," said Rooney.

"If fund balances are used to complete projects in excess of the $2 million in maintenance and $2.5 million in technology, cuts in operations would occur more rapidly," he said.