12/16/12 - Itâs highly unlikely that the Brighton Area School District will meet the deadline of erasing its long-term deficit by the end of the 2013-14 school year. Thatâs the opinion of Bill Anderson, the vice president of the Brighton school board, who made the statement at the board meeting Monday night. Anderson is a legislative liaison for the Michigan Townships Association and a former Brighton Township supervisor. The end of the 13-14 fiscal year is the deadline the state has given âdeficit districtsâ to remove their red ink. However, Anderson said itâs unrealistic for the state to expect school districts on the list to get back in the black after the legislature cut school funding by $470 per student last year and didnât restore the funding this year. For a district like Brighton, with slightly over 6,000 students, it means a drop of almost $3 million in revenue in a single year, and a $6 million loss over the last two years. Superintendent Greg Gray tells WHMI that had it not been for those major cuts in public education funding, Brighton would almost have erased the legacy deficit by now. The Brighton Area Schools currently has a long-term deficit of $7 million, which at one time stood at $15 million. Absent the legacy deficit, this past year the school district was in the black by $500,000. In presenting the annual audit report, auditor Bruce Dunn told the board last week that Brighton is one of the few school districts in the state actually making progress in erasing its long-term deficit. With the state funding cuts to education, Dunn predicted the number of schools becoming deficit districts will rise this year. (TT)
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