'We were lied to:' Brockton School Committee discovers budget reduced by $3 million

BROCKTON - Brockton School Committee members received another shock recently when they discovered their non-net spending budget for fiscal year 2024 was reduced by the city council from the proposed $15 million to an actual amount of roughly $11 million.

City Chief Financial Officer Troy Clarkson, who will now provide regular financial updates at every school committee meeting, gave committee members a glimpse into the district's finances as the first quarter of fiscal year 2024 comes to a close - the first report since Clarkson took charge of the school department's finances and completely overhauled its financial operations.

While looking at the overall status of the district's spending so far as of Sept. 29, committee members were "surprised" when they discovered that the true remaining budget was lower than they thought as they were never directly notified of the roughly $3 million reduction.

"We were lied to. This whole body was lied to," said school committee member Tony Rodrigues.

The council provided the school district with all the money requested for the net spending fund, which Clarkson said was the priority for then-Superintendent Mike Thomas to be fully funded. The district's non-net spending is used to pay for transportation costs.

"Net spending" covers most operational costs like teacher salaries and energy bills and "non-net spending" is money that's used to pay for transportation costs, including busing services and bus driver salaries.

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Why was the budget reduced?

The city council voted to appropriate fiscal year 2024 funds to Brockton Public Schools back in June, roughly a month before the news of the district's $14.4 million budget shortfall the previous year was announced.

"That was a function of the available funds at the time," Clarkson said. "It was out of necessity because of the limit of the availability of funds to do that."

Multiple school committee members said at Oct. 3's meeting that neither Thomas nor former school Chief Financial Officer Aldo Petronio, both of whom were informed by Clarkson of the $3 million non-net spending reduction at the time, relayed the deficit to the rest of the committee.

"Every day it's something new. I don't even know what going to come out of the hat tomorrow," Rodrigues said.

The council discussed and voted on how much money to allocate the district in a public meeting that was televised.

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Clarkson recommended to the city council that they appropriate less money than the school committee proposed in hopes the district wouldn't need the full $15 million and the city could save money.

"Our intent was to monitor spending throughout the year and then supplement the budget if those additional funds were needed," Clarkson said. "We may need to make an adjustment and increase the funding for non-net."

Is budget spending on track for FY24?

With the first quarter of the fiscal year completed, 24.86% of the school district's budget should be spent in order to stay on track and be balanced out by the end of the year.

While the net spending budget, which is used for normal school operations like energy bills and teacher salaries, sits below the target at 24.62%, the reduced non-net spending budget is over the target at 25.78% as of Sept. 29.

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At the beginning of the year, Brockton schools purchased six buses to add to its fleet. Since that cost was paid up front, Clarkson said that the percentage should level out as the year progresses and will likely be balanced.

At the end of the first quarter, the spending budgeted for vehicles sits over 200%, but since most of the spending was paid upfront, Petronio expects the percentage to steadily decrease over time. Similarly, spending on transportation tools and hardware supplies is already at 120% for the year since the district buys supplies in bulk up front.

Enterprise staff writer Christopher Butler can be reached by email at cbutler@enterprisenews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Enterprise: Brockton School Committee finds FY24 budget was unknowingly reduced