Knoxville Receives State Payment, Ending Deficit at $166,000

The Knoxville School District will end the 2014-2015 school year with $166,000 budget deficit. That’s according to Superintendent Steve Wilder, who says due to a state payment for the district’s pre-school program, the unexpected finances dropped the deficit down nearly $60,000 from last night’s anticipated final number.

Regardless, District 202 remained with a higher operation expense total than what was available.

Wilder tells WGIL, that the reasoning is largely due to state aid.

“State aid is the biggest challenge for us for the last three years, each of the last three years we’ve lost about $420,000 each year, so we’re getting close to about $1.2 or 1.3 million,” says Wilder. “We’ve been able to anticipate that and plan for it, but over a period of time that just catches up with you and that’s exactly what happened this year.”

Wilder says an increased tax rate for properties in the district helped a bit. A rate of $4.56–one cent higher than last year and less than the anticipated $4.61 helped bring in more revenue. He adds that the difference was around $600,000 in additional equalized assessed value.

Knoxville shaved off nearly $120,000 since Wilder projected a deficit of $286,000 back in September of last year.

Wilder says moving forward, he anticipates having a tentative budget for the next year sometime in July.