Current Finances

Here is the most recent Spring 2025 Community Update presented at all township and village meetings. Our plan is to visit these meetings twice per year (fall and spring) to give an update on our schools and gather feedback/information from our community.

We have been placed in a Precautionary Fiscal State for the second year in a row after our November 2024 5 Year Forecast filing due to our low general fund balance in FY26 and a negative general fund balance in FY27. We submitted the Board approved Written Plan & Narrative February 25, 2025. (Click here to see the Written Plan and Narrative submitted in February 2024.)

End of April 2025, our bank balances were:

  • Daily Operations = $3,580,999.15
  • Investments = $1,948,905.03.

We have received our Clinton & Warren County tax settlements, and this is what we'll have to survive on until our fall settlements.

Due to the 2023 reappraisal year for Clinton County, our tax settlement was $848,613 more than we received last year. A large increase was forecasted, and after two months of data, we are expected to have $146,629 more at the end of the year than we thought (if everything goes according to forecast).

2024 was a reappraisal year for Warren County. Residents should have received their values around September 21, and then can use the tax calculator on the Warren County Auditor's website.

Our bond millage rate has decreased from 1.5 to 1.2 and will remain at 1.2 for this year. The bond will come off the books December 2028. Due to refinancing three times, we have shaved essentially 3 years of payments off the original cost of the construction bond from 2001.

We no longer receive money from the 0.5 mill maintenance levy, which is why we will be putting 25% of the new 1% earned income tax revenue toward permanent improvements.

To give you a frame of reference, it costs our district an average of $485,000 for each payroll (semimonthly), $245,000 for our insurance each month (District side only), and $13,000 for Medicare each month (District side only).

Granted, we get about $385,000 twice a month from State Funding (which in addition covers our STRS/SERS [pensions] each month ~$142,000).

For our income tax, we get quarterly payments at the ends of January, April, July, and October. 2024 will be the last year your income will be taxed under the 0.5% earned income tax levy that was passed in May 2019. 2026 will be the first year your income will be taxed under the 1% earned income tax levy passed in May 2025. We are projecting to receive about $200k in April of 2026.

More Information

    Audits

    Our FY23 audit has been posted and can be found on the State Auditor's Website. (Type Massie in the Entity Name or Report Title box; choose School as the Entity Type; choose Clinton for the County; choose a specific Fiscal Year if you wish. Audits go back to the 1998-1999 school year.)

    District Expenses

    To take a look at our expenses, please see Ohio Checkbook (updated monthly). We also created a presentation in January 2025 outlining the Cost of a C-M Education.

    State Funding

    For the last decade (at least), our school has received the exact same amount of state funding. That's because the state has guaranteed that a district will never receive less money than it did the previous year. What that means is the amount of state funding we should receive based on the state's formula is less than the amount of state funding we've received the previous year, so they give us what we received the previous year.

    Due to this stagnant state funding, our state funding now makes up 47% of our budget when it used to make up 57% just 10 years ago.

    Resources:

    Ohio Department of Education & Workforce School Finance & Funding

    Explanation of the Fair School Funding Plan (HB 110) applied in 2021-2022

    COVID Funding

    From 2021 - 2024, we were allocated $2,895,435.08 total monies granted through various Coronavirus Relief Efforts. This money could only be used to prepare, prevent, or respond to the COVID-19 pandemic unless otherwise specified. We used our Coronavirus Relief / ESSER money ($2,244,882.56) for hotspots and chromebooks with hotspots; campus-wide Wi-Fi; (along with the $551,466.16 in BroadBand Ohio Connectivity dollars); salaries for social workers, technology assistants, cafeteria (while there was no incoming revenue March - May 2020 yet we still were providing meals), teachers specifically addressing learning loss, summer school intervention; the unsafe portion of our Annex demolition; disinfecting/sanitizing supplies; PPE; 2 buses; HVAC repair; Chiller replacement; and a school-based health center. We used our ARP Homeless and IDEA money ($100,256.52) for a Homeless Resource Navigation Pilot program to address financial instability and homelessness and additional staff and more training to better handle the needs of our Kindergarten through second grade special needs students. We have spent all of this money by the end of the school year in June of 2023. We greatly appreciate the Clinton County Commissioners and Massie Township Trustees for granting us some of their Coronavirus Relief funds as well!

Staff