Staff salaries and benefits approved earlier this year have prompted an increase to Garfield Re-2 School District’s upcoming budget, a financial officer said.

The Garfield Re-2 School Board on Wednesday passed unanimously an $85.53 million appropriation for the preliminary 2022-23 fiscal year budget. The appropriation represents a 14.25% increase from the $74.85 million passed for the 2021-22 budget.

Garfield Re-2 Chief Financial Officer Jeff Blanford told the school board the increase to the upcoming budget, running July 1-June 30, 2023, comes from the board’s recent decision to increase base staff salaries by over 16% from $36,896 to $43,011. Similar were also made to special service providers and classified staff.

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Meanwhile, the board also recently approved a roughly 25% increase Garfield Re-2 Superintendent Heather Grumley, $159,685 to $200,000.

Other increases with the 2022-2023 budget are: 

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• general fund increased from $57.94 million to $64.73 million; food service fund increased from $1.62 million to $1.94 million;
• designated purposed grant fund increased from $1.18 million to $1.5 million; 
• pupil activities fund increased from $755,000 to $800,000; 
• capital projects increased from $4.5 million to $7.75 million.

The only fund to decrease is bond redemption, dropping from $8.84 million to $8.8 million.

Asked about the health of the upcoming budget, Blanford said adjustments may need to be made later in the year.

“We will want to keep an eye on this,” Blanford said. “We will have some adjustments this year we need to talk to you about when we see how the economic environment over the next few months unfolds.”