The Polk County Board of Education wrapped up the budget process this year after having to make some sacrifices for the FY 2021 budget, but no major adjustment was made to the overall cost of teacher salaries as the academic year is getting closer to beginning.

Board members unanimously approved of the FY 2021 budget with changes made after the state legislature returned their own layout of revenues and expenditures projected through the end of June next year. The board’s Budget Committee who finalized the budget reported back with Britt Madden Jr. delivering the good and bad news for the year.

However, the cuts to revenue from the state and expenditures that ultimately benefit local youth weren’t as hard as they were thought they might be initially.

“We have a 10% reduction before us from the previous year in QBE funding. We have since adjusted for that on the revenue side,” Madden said.

Total revenue from the state for the Polk School District comes in at $49,476,669, which is a reduction of around $18 million in funding for the FY 2021 budget after the state legislature finished up their business for the year in the past weeks. Madden said that cuts were made to keep the shortfall from impacting local educators, though it will eat into the year-end fund balance.

Now the budget is expected to have a $6.7 million fund balance from the previous year left over once the spending is said and done. The tentative budget had called for a fund balance of just over $11.7 million in total.

One thing that won’t change is local tax collections for the FY 2021 budget that provides a portion of the district’s funding.

“I want to reiterate that we have made no changes to our local tax in our budget from our tentative budget,” Madden said. “We are still only at $13 million flat from our local sources.”

Overall revenues for the approved budget were finalized at $78.4 million and $71.7 million for the amount of money needed to run the district.

Revenues had originally been projected at over $83.8 million, with $72.1 million in expenses for the year.

Board members had no additional business for the meeting and adjourned. The only board member not present for the vote was Chris Culver, who missed the meeting while attending to family business.