SHEBOYGAN, WI (WHBL) - This is the time of the year local government bodies finalize their budgets for the upcoming year. One entity that finished their process on Tuesday was the Sheboygan Area School District. Their board of education approved a budget that is over 132-million dollars, which is a decrease of over 250-thousand dollars from the previous school year.
The Sheboygan Area School District was worried several months ago that their 2015-16 budget would need several million dollars in cuts in order to balance.
But after the state budget was finalized with no cuts to K-12 education funding, the district was able to avoid big changes to programs, and only three-and-a-half full time employee cuts.
Business Manager Director Mark Boehlke says once final numbers came in from the state earlier this month as projected, factors such as student enrollment helped to increase state aid by over three-and-a-half million dollars.
“That doesn’t give up additional revenue,” says Boehlke. “What it does is allow us to lower the tax levy for local taxpayers.”
The tax levy will decrease by about 3.7-percent. “The mill rate is going down 30 cents per one-thousand dollars of valuation,” says Boehlke. “So that’s good news.” The actual rate will be at $11.88 per thousand.
Boehlke says there was the need to do some additional cutting to balance the budget, but that was achieved with employee turnover and not needing as much to pay for utilities as first budgeted.