Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - As federal COVID dollars are set to expire, some school districts may find themselves in a financial bind, depending on how they spent the additional funds.
A pair of local school districts say they're doing well, but are keeping an eye on other funding sources.
Brian Fessler of the NYS School Boards Association says, how the end of the federal COVID funding affects districts, really depends.
"That's dependent on the amount of funding from the federal government from the various COVID packages that each district received, but then also how it was used," explained Fessler in an interview with WBEN. "This is one time funding, districts knew the expiration, at least generally, of these funds. To varying degrees, districts, were able, within reason to work around that deadline. But for some districts, that's going to be more challenging, if they use the funding for staff and other positions, whether temporary or permanent lines, perhaps a little less challenging if districts use their funds on materials, supplies, products."
For districts that took in migrant students, Fessler says critical resources were used to meet those needs.
"The expiration of the stimulus dollars, and then obviously, the state budget proposal that we're working through now, it's going to be that much more impactful and much more relevant, and that much more pressing for those districts. That's the unique circumstance that those districts are dealing with very notable, obviously, attention grabbing," said Fessler.
Sweet Home Superintendent Michael Ginestre says his district is doing well financially.
"We actually are projecting an increase in state aid, mainly because our enrollment continues to increase over the past several years, and we're projecting increases, again, over the next several years," said Ginestre with WBEN.
However, Ginestre says the district did get a dip in foundation aid this year, and went from fully funded to not fully funded.
In the meantime, Ginestre will be extremely watchful of the finances.
"Costs are increasing in special services especially, so we want to make sure that our revenues continue to match with what our expenses are, in terms of the extra costs, whether they be inflationary or extra costs related to special services. So we're watching it extremely close, like we would any year," Ginestre said.
At Cleveland Hill, Superintendent Jon McSwan and business officials are forecasting a challenging year ahead for the district.
"We were pretty effective at leveraging the stimulus money, or the COVID money, as you will, the best we could. So right now, Cleveland Hill, we're we're in a pretty decent spot budgetary wise," says McSwan in an interview with WBEN.
McSwan says the district used COVID funding for staff retention and some one-time expenditures, and did add a few temporary positions over the course of the years that the federal money was coming in. McSwan says he doesn't anticipate cutting those positions anytime soon.