ABOVE: In the absence of Superintendent John Hart, Director of Human Resources Kim Pabst presided over the September 24th Danville District 118 Board meeting.
In front of a sparse crowd at their September 24th meeting, the Danville District 118 School Board unanimously passed their 2025-26 school year budget. With revenues projected in the $93 million range, and expenditures in the $94 million range; the budget goes in with a deficit of $464,000.
Although the aforementioned deficit is much better than the projected deficit on last year’s budget, which was $4.5 million; board member Christopher Easton still called it a “bad budget,” stating that an important factor was missing.
AUDIO: In every budget you have a “contingency line,” where you plan for things to go wrong. And we took our contingency line out, which makes it look like our deficit’s lower than maybe it might be, if things don’t go well.
Easton added that last year’s projected $4.5 million deficit jumping up to $17 million was partly due to the end of ESSER school COVID relief funding, and when it was actually received.
AUDIO: I think the combination of trying to spend COVID money that we had for buildings; and we couldn’t pay until projects were completed; so we ended up holding money over from one year to another.
Board president Darlene Halloran says things are definitely looking up and moving in the right direction. But she added that the end of the ESSER COVID relief money is going to make things challenging.
AUDIO: And I think we took great advantage of having it, in terms of infrastructure of our buildings. Look what we have. Look what we were able to do with the money. And I’m very proud of all of that. But, you’re right. That was something now that we don’t have. And so, money that we were able to spend on other things, instead of the infrastructure; now we have to put back into infrastructure needs.
The District 118 Board needed to have the current school year budget passed by October 1st.
