Current Finances

We have been placed in a Precautionary Fiscal State after our November 2023 5 Year Forecast filing due to our low general fund balance in FY25 and a negative general fund balance in FY26. We completed, Board approved, and submitted the required Written Plan and Narrative.

End of September 2024, our bank statements looked like this:

  • Daily Operations = $1,733,908.38
  • Investments = $2,508,833.20

We received our Clinton County tax settlements in August and our Warren County settlement in September. This will be the money we have to survive on (along with our bimonthly state funding payments and quarterly income tax payments) through January. We moved $750,000 of the daily operations money to the investment account to earn more in interest. We will move $600,000 of it back as needed (the other $150,000 will remain to repay what we moved in January 2024 to cover expenses).

Due to the 2023 reappraisal year for Clinton County, our tax settlement was $848,613 more than we received last year. A large increase was forecasted, and after two months of data, we are expected to have $146,629 more at the end of the year than we thought (if everything goes according to forecast).

2024 is a reappraisal year for Warren County. Residents should have received their values around September 21, and then can use the tax calculator on the Warren County Auditor's website.

Our bond millage rate has decreased from 1.5 to 1.2 and will continue to decrease through the life of the bond (December 2028). Due to refinancing three times, we have shaved essentially 3 years of payments off the original cost of the construction bond from 2001.

We will no longer receive money from the 0.5 mill maintenance levy after December 2024.

To give you a frame of reference, it costs our district an average of $485,000 for each payroll (semimonthly), $245,000 for our insurance each month (District side only), and $13,000 for Medicare each month (District side only).

Granted, we get about $385,000 twice a month from State Funding (which in addition covers our STRS/SERS [pensions] each month ~$142,000).

For our income tax, we get quarterly payments at the ends of January, April, July, and October. 2024 will be the last year your income will be taxed under this levy. The renewal we sought in March 2024 failed, and we will be asking for a 1% earned income tax on the November 5, 2024 ballot.

More Information

    Five Year Forecasts
    Audits

    Our FY23 audit has been posted and can be found on the State Auditor's Website. (Type Massie in the Entity Name or Report Title box; choose School as the Entity Type; choose Clinton for the County; choose a specific Fiscal Year if you wish. Audits go back to the 1998-1999 school year.)

    District Expenses

    To take a look at our expenses, please see Ohio Checkbook.

    State Funding

    For the last decade (at least), our school has received the exact same amount of state funding. That's because the state has guaranteed that a district will never receive less money than it did the previous year. What that means is the amount of state funding we should receive based on the state's formula is less than the amount of state funding we've received the previous year, so they give us what we received the previous year.

    Due to this stagnant state funding, our state funding now makes up 47% of our budget when it used to make up 57% just 10 years ago.

    Resources:

    Ohio Department of Education & Workforce School Finance & Funding

    Explanation of the Fair School Funding Plan (HB 110) applied in 2021-2022

    COVID Funding

    From 2021 - 2024, we were allocated $2,895,435.08 total monies granted through various Coronavirus Relief Efforts. This money could only be used to prepare, prevent, or respond to the COVID-19 pandemic unless otherwise specified. We used our Coronavirus Relief / ESSER money ($2,244,882.56) for hotspots and chromebooks with hotspots; campus-wide Wi-Fi; (along with the $551,466.16 in BroadBand Ohio Connectivity dollars); salaries for social workers, technology assistants, cafeteria (while there was no incoming revenue March - May 2020 yet we still were providing meals), teachers specifically addressing learning loss, summer school intervention; the unsafe portion of our Annex demolition; disinfecting/sanitizing supplies; PPE; 2 buses; HVAC repair; Chiller replacement; and a school-based health center. We used our ARP Homeless and IDEA money ($100,256.52) for a Homeless Resource Navigation Pilot program to address financial instability and homelessness and additional staff and more training to better handle the needs of our Kindergarten through second grade special needs students. We have spent all of this money by the end of the school year in June of 2023. We greatly appreciate the Clinton County Commissioners and Massie Township Trustees for granting us some of their Coronavirus Relief funds as well!

Staff