Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Dallas County Schools is one step closer to being able to close out the 2023-2024 budget year and moving forward with its final 2024-2025 budget.

Chief Schools Financial Officer Quinette Bruno presented the Board of Education with those final documents during their regular meeting on Thursday night at the Dallas County Courthouse Annex.

The final 2024 financial statement shows the district began the year on Oct. 1, 2023 with a fund balance of $3.94 million and ended the year with balance of $5.48 million in the general fund.

The district had $31.75 million in revenue with $30.09 million in expenses.

The ending balance of the 2024 document is reflected in the 2025 budget. However, the ending balance is expected to fall to $2.47 million by Sept. 30 of this year. The district is expecting to receive $28.95 million in revenues with $31.64 million in expenses. 

Some of the excess spending over revenues comes from its capital outlay of $2.4 million that is going toward the construction of one field at Keith Middle High School and two fields at Southside High School.

Bruno said they are just awaiting the signature from State School Superintendent Dr. Eric Mackey for those documents to be finalized. She said he is expected to sign any day.

“Once he signs off on the 2024 financial statements, then we can access our carryover fund balance,” Bruno said.

She said that while the district is already drawing on its funds that have been allocated for 2025, the district has not be able to draw on all of the funds that were carried over to the current year.

One other negative for the school district is that the district had to return $2.4 million in funds to the state department that were not used from ESSER projects. 

Dr. Daniel Boyd, chief administrative officer of the Dallas County Schools, said he going to call the state education department to see if they can get the funds returned to them. 

“I had a conversation earlier today with Superintendent (Anthony) Sampson and Ms. Bruno, and we will contact the state department (Friday) to see if we can get that money back,” Bruno said.

Board President Melvin Flanagan-Brown asked if they were to get the funds back from the state, she asked if those funds are earmarked for specific tasks.

“If we get the funds back, I am pretty sure we will have to bring the rules back to the table,” Bruno said. 

Sampson said even through the auditing process of the previous year and revising the 2025 budget, he said the schools have not lacked anything they needed because all of the schools are Title I schools “because the consolidated budget was already approved.”

Also the board approved the financial statement. While the general fund balance of $7.29 million is enough to cover 2.58 months of expenses, only $231,639.54 is the unrestricted reserve funds, which is only about 11% of what they need to cover a month of expenses.

Board member Leroy Miles said he wanted to make sure that the other board members realized that they only have that in reserves, and not the $7.29 million.