Mansfield City Schools may earn its release from state-imposed fiscal emergency sooner than expected but that will depend on several factors, including maintaining a tight rein on expenditures.
Paul Marshall, chairman of the district’s Financial Planning and Supervision Commission, said Tuesday the district’s fiscal posture has improved significantly.
Marshall’s comments came as the commission approved a five-year forecast – approved earlier by the board of education – which estimates that MCS will end its fiscal year on June 30 with a general fund balance of approximately $4.6 million.
“The district is now in a good position financially,” Marshall said. “The process has been painful but it has put the district in a good position.”
A year ago the commission, working with Superintendent Brian Garverick and the board of education, developed a financial recovery plan which included the layoffs of teachers and support staff and the closing of Newman Elementary School.
“Based on what we know today, in my view, the district is in good shape but we still need to continue to be cautious about spending,” Marshall said.
Commission secretary Barb Bechtel, an Ohio Department of Education regional fiscal consultant, agreed.
“The district is on track. As long as they keep a handle on their expenses, they should continue to have positive balances,” she said. “The biggest question will be salaries and benefits because they are in negotiations.”
Contract talks are underway with the Mansfield School Employees Association, which represents both teachers and support staff. The current one-year agreement expires on July 1.
Laura Brown, representing Auditor of State Dave Yost, reviewed a draft report of accounting methods which cited corrections that the district must make as one step toward eventual release from fiscal emergency.
“My characterization of this is that it is pretty minimal stuff, technical violations,” Marshall said.
Brown, a project manager in Yost’s Canton office, agreed.
Marshall asked Brown and Sheri Gombosch, executive assistant to the district treasurer, to work out a timeline for correcting the accounting methods.
Brown said her office also must work with the district to create yet another five-year forecast, a process which she said she hopes to complete later this year.
“The sooner we can accomplish this, the sooner we can begin the process to request release (from fiscal emergency),” said Marshall, who noted earlier that the average time a school district remains in fiscal emergency is four years.
Yost placed Mansfield City Schools in fiscal emergency in November 2013 after the board of education “reluctantly” made the request, acknowledging that the district could not overcome a $3.6 million deficit. Marshall said later the amount of the deficit nearly equaled the $4 million the district lost when its renewal levy failed in November 2012.
The fiscal emergency declaration created the commission, which oversees all district finances, and allowed it to secure $3.6 million from the state’s School District Solvency Assistance Fund to offset the deficit. The district is repaying the money -- $153,541 each month – over a two-year period that began last July.
Marshall, a former ODE fiscal consultant, was appointed by the state superintendent of public instruction to serve as commission chair. He is joined on the panel by Sharon Hanrahan of the Ohio Office of Budget Management and Mansfield residents Jill Haring and Mark Brunn.
The commission has met monthly since Jan. 2, 2014.