LANSING, Mich. — The Lansing School District Board of Education has just approved a budget amendment for the 2021- 2022 school year showing the district has almost $40 million left over from the school year.
Lansing School District officials say there are many factors that account for the surplus the district is seeing this year.
“Each year, we look at our staffing numbers that we need to have to support the operations of the district. We do our best to fill those vacancies. If for some reason those vacancies aren’t filled, the money that was earmarked to support those positions remain in our general fund,” said school board Vice President Rachel Willis.
Jon Laing, the district's chief financial officer, says grant money from the state and the money district gets for each student went up by about $300, which also contributed to the $36 million balance.
Willis says some of the surplus can be traced back to COVID-19 relief funding.
“We know that there’s some programs that we were able to allocate funding through some of the emergency COVID relief funding, so they were earmarked as general fund dollars for us to spend that we don’t have to spend this year out of the general fund because we got emergency COVID relief,” said Willis.
Laing said in an email that the district is eligible to get about $110 million in COVID grants.
The Lansing School District spent $12 million in grant money in each of the past two school years and expects to spend $48 million in the current school year.
The district's total general fund expenditures this year will be just shy of $183 million.
The district is required to submit a final budget by June 30 of each year, and then that budget will then be sent out for an audit.
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