The Peru Gazette

A statement from A. Paul Scott, Interim Superintendent of Schools, Peru CSD

Peru Central School District appreciates the cooperation of the State Comptroller’s Office regarding the recent comprehensive fiscal accountability audit of the school district, according to Peru Central Interim Superintendent of Schools A. Paul Scott. The District was very pleased to learn that sufficient progress had been made in the areas identified during the first such fiscal accountability audit report. The District is pleased to note that these areas were not mentioned in this follow-up fiscal accountability audit report.  The District was not surprised that the fiscal accountability audit focused on a particular area that Peru Central – and the school district’s own public session budget development workshops of winter 2011 were focused on: fund balance.

Interim Superintendent Scott said the primary issue identified within the audit is that the District has been exceedingly conservative in its expenditure forecasts and as a result maintained an excess amount of fund balance within its annual budget.  This historic practice was reviewed prior to the audit and plans had already been put into place to reduce the fund balance of the District. Given two years of significant state aid cuts to Peru CSD, the District was fortunate in prior years to not have expended all that it was authorized to expend. At numerous public session budget development workshops in recent years, the District has been very forthcoming and consistent in regard to being conservative with revenues and being conservative with expenditures. Doing so was in keeping with a year 2004 longer-term finance study of Peru CSD. Prior year surpluses are now being applied during an extremely fiscally challenging period.  This commitment is illustrated by the fact that fund balance was reduced by over one (1) million dollars last school year and Peru Central plans to use another $1.8M in fund balance this school year, according to  Interim Superintendent A. Paul Scott.

Regarding the balance of revenues and expenditures prior to the 2010-11 school year, the District planned to have a deficit during the 2009-10 school year, but drastically reduced expenditures as the fiscal crisis continued to unfold and ended with a surplus of $16,817 on $38,118,435 worth of expenditures.  During 2007-08 and 2008-09 school years the District also nearly balanced its revenues and expenditures with expenditure coming within 99.3% of revenues.  It is the District’s belief that had it gone into this fiscal crisis with an operating budget depending on a revenue line tied to fund balance, the financial impact to the District could have been catastrophic given the recent reduction of several million dollars in State Aid.

Interim Superintendent Scott said Peru CSD is committed to a balanced approach to its budgetary process that combines the use of fund balance as recommended by the Comptrollers Audit and supported by the District’s actions and reducing its general operating budget.  A. Paul Scott said that over the last two years, the Peru Central School District made cuts to it general operating budget of nearly three (3) million dollars and anticipates making additional reductions during the 2012-13 budget development period of winter/spring 2012.  Fund balance will continue to be applied to the annual general operating budget to assist the District in bridging this extremely fiscally challenging period.