By Julieta Paita
NORTHEAST NEWS
During the first superintendent’s business advisory committee meeting this past October 25, Dr. Wanda Bamberg, Aldine school district superintendent, shared important information about the school district’s financial challenges.
With 64 thousand students currently enrolled, Aldine ISD has a challenge to keep up with budget. Dr. Wanda Bamberg said the way school was receiving funds before this school year was some how different.
“There was certain law that was in place, and at the last legislature session, they did not change the law, they only changed the way we were going to be funding,” said Bamberg.
During the school year 2009-2010, the school district was schedule to receive $298 million, but $27 million of that was the federal stimulus money. The following school year, the funding went up, it was $310 million, and again $27 million was from federal stimulus money.
“The $27 million from the federal stimulus money must be spent or the school district would lose it,” said Bamberg. “We hired positions for two years, or we charge off positions that were eligible and some materials for the two years.”
The school year of 2011-2012 the district is scheduled to get $309 million, and “the special funding session gave us $284 million, for a loss of $24 million dollars,” said Bamberg. However, there is only a loss of $14 million because Aldine got $10 million from money that the government was holding.
The part of the way government set up the funding for a school district “is how many students they are projecting for the district to have, and also what are the appraisal values that Harris County says we are worth,” said Bamberg.
Dr. Wanda Bamberg explained that every year they cut the school budget to prepare for the next school year, “we cut about $43 million dollars out of our expenditures every year; we did not lay off, we prepare for it, we did not replace positions.” After balancing the budget, Dr. Bamberg said this year they have a balanced budget “because of the things we cut during the past three years.”