CCSC Board holds workshop for proposed 2026 budget

The Cloverdale Community School Corporation (CCSC) Board of School Trustees heard a budget presentation Aug. 11 for the 2025-2026 budget, presented by CCSC Superintendent Greg Linton during the board's regular monthly meeting.

"Education, Operation, Debt Service, Pension Bond and Rainy Day are the five funds that we have at Cloverdale Community Schools that we submit to the Department of Local Government Finance (DLGF) for budget approval," Linton explained.

Average daily membership, Linton noted, is what drives the Education portion of the corporation's budget.

"All of the other funds that are listed – if they have revenue going into them – are tax-driven," he said. "Debt, Pension and Operation are the three funds that are tax-driven. The Education fund is driven primarily by attendance and the foundation formula that the state uses to send money to us."

Linton highlighted the fact that CCSC's student enrollment only declined six students between the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years.

"That's not bad for a small rural school district," he said. "Most school districts are losing a higher percentage, so we felt like that was good news for us and our brick-and-mortar school attendance. What was even better for our budget is when you look at Cloverdale Distance Learning Academy, in January 2020 we started with 179 kids, and we ended last year with 2,150 kids. These students are enrolled from across the state of Indiana, and for those students we receive 85-percent funding of the foundation amount of what we receive for our brick-and-mortar kids."

The Education fund, Linton said, is the corporation's largest fund and drives a lot of its financial decisions.

"We've been steadily since 2020 building our cash balance in this (Education) fund," Linton said. "Last year was a good year, and we increased the cash balance in this fund by almost 1.8 million dollars. Some of the assumptions that are used when we build the budget are that efforts will be made to maintain responsible staffing levels for positions that are supported by the Education fund. We budgeted a 10 percent increase for utilities, 15 percent increase for property-casualty insurance and a decline of 12 brick-and-mortar students for this school year. The budget is based off of Cloverdale Distance Learning Academy not growing; we ended last school year with 2,150 students. I think we'll probably exceed that number considerably, but to keep a conservative budget, we (didn't factor in any growth in the CDLA)."

Linton commented on the impact of circuit breaker funds on the corporation's budget. Circuit breaker funds provide financial assistance to public school districts, helping to offset costs. Additionally, property tax caps, often linked to circuit breaker credits, can lead to revenue losses, affecting overall school funding.

"Our Circuit Breaker impact went up substantially, but it's still not very high compared to a lot of neighboring schools who are at $700,000 and $800,000," Linton explained. "Our tax cap is at $177,000, which went up from $72,000 last year, which is still a very manageable number."

Regarding the tax levy, Linton explained, "Our tax levy history has dropped every year since about 2019, and one of the primary indicators for that rate going down is the Owen County and Putnam County assessed value has gone up substantially over the last couple of years. This past year we dropped below $1 to $0.95."

The corporation's Education fund budget is based on 18 months, the last half of 2025 and all of 2026.

"You can see that we are projecting revenue of a little over 40 million dollars," Linton said. "In 2014 it was 14 million dollars, so you can see that things have changed a lot in the last few years at Cloverdale."

Regarding Debt Service, Linton noted "the local property taxes that we know we've got coming in the remainder of this year and all next year is $860,000. You can see our expenditures (total) 2.4 million dollars – that number is substantially higher than what it will actually be because we have the new facility that we are going to start building so we'll sell bonds later this year. We projected that first payment to be $1.25 million, but it will probably be far under that amount. We just want to make sure we cover our expenses on debt payments to our lenders.

Linton requested the board approve a levy of $1,859,917 with a tax rate of a little over $0.58, which is lower than last year when it was over $0.60. "It will actually come in a little lower," he said, "because they (state) always give you a lower rate than what you are asking."

The corporation's Pension bond includes a zero levy and a zero rate.

"The reason we do that is Indiana code will allow you to use your LIT (local income tax) dollars to be able to pay for that so what we do is we use revenue that we already have coming in so that we don't tack on an additional rate to the taxpayer," Linton said. "It's one way that we can lower the tax rate compared to other districts that don't have LIT coming in."

Regarding the corporation's Operations fund, Linton said the corporation's project revenue for the next 18 months will be just under $9 million.

"We're projecting almost 15 million dollars in expenses, which again is most likely much higher than what we will probably spend," he said. "We're requesting a levy in 2026 for $6,494,710.00 with a rate of just a little over $2. Because the Education fund is carrying such a good cash balance, we are able to transfer some of those dollars, up to 15 percent of the revenue that goes into our Education Fund to the Operations fund each year. A month or so ago, we did an additional appropriation for the Education fund in the amount of 2.8 million dollars. Because our Education fund is doing well, it allowed us to transfer into our Operations fund. That 2.8 million dollars will count as an additional expense in the second half of this year so that's one reason the expenditures are at least 2.8 million dollars more than we'll actually spend. I don't anticipate our Operations fund being any higher than it's ever been, but because of that additional appropriation, it will kind of skew our number for the second half of this year."

In summary, Linton told the board, "If you look at our advertised versus our actual rate since 2017, you can see that what we've advertised is always substantially higher, but within reason to what we actually get and 2026 will be no different."

The board approved advertising the budget as presented by Linton. Members of the public also had an opportunity to make comments and discuss their concerns at a public hearing held Aug. 25. The board is expected to move to adopt the 2026 budget at its next regularly scheduled meeting on Sept. 9.

In addition, the board approved the following professional leave, field trip and facility use requests:

Professional leaves
Aug. 13 – Heather Clingan, Indiana State Fair Experience Day, Indianapolis.
Aug. 20 – Ivy Oberkrom, ONT new IIEP system training, ONT.
Aug. 25 – Heather Clingan, MI-BAT mentor training, Hendricks County Fairgrounds.

Field trips
Aug. 13 – FFA, Indiana State Fair, Indianapolis.
Sept. 6 – Emerald Command Marching Band, Brownsburg High School.
Sept. 20 – Emerald Command Marching Band, Greenwood High School.
Sept. 20 – Horticulture Team, Purdue University.
Oct. 4 – Emerald Command Marching Band, Southport High School.

Facility use
July 31 to Aug. 1 – CHS gymnasium, auxiliary gymnasium and café; volleyball team bonding, practice, and lock-in.
Aug. 9 to Sept. 6 – Football field and concession; Cloverdale Community Youth League (CCYL), youth league games, football and cheer.
Aug. 18 – CMS Media Center, CMS PTO; fall meeting.
Sept. 16 – CHS gymnasium, auxiliary gymnasium and café; FFA, District VII Kick-Off.

Additional personnel matters receiving unanimous board approval included:

Resignations
Hannah Beaman – CES instructional aide.

Employment
Courtney Lary – CES medical instructional aide
Kirsten Vaughn – Knoy part-time sub.
Kayla Parrish – Bus driver, full-time.
Rhonda Trueblood – CMS café, part-time.
Patricia Sipes – Café long-term sub.

FMLA
Sara Zaring – deputy treasurer.

Coaching volunteer
Payton Asbury – CHS wrestling coach.

The Cloverdale Community School Board will meet again at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 9 in the Arthur L. Johnson Administration Building, 310 E. Logan St., Cloverdale. Members of the board include Vivian Whitaker, Katrina Lewis, Donna Fidler, Melissa Carrell, Emily Haltom, Joe Mann and Mike Rightmyer II.