BREA : School District Budget Contains Reserves

Trustees of the Brea Olinda Unified School District approved a preliminary $22.9-million budget this week that showed healthy reserves despite higher costs in some areas and a potential loss related to Orange County’s financial crisis, officials said.

The district’s total revenue is expected to increase for the 1995-96 school year by about $480,000 above last year’s, officials said, mostly through additional student and day-care attendance, and cost-of-living increases from state funding.

Some added expenses, said Assistant Supt. Gary D. Goff, are $618,000 to pay an outstanding debt, a $316,000 for a projected increase in employee health-care premiums, a $105,000 increase in utility fees, including trash dumping rates, and about $600,000 to cover losses in Orange County’s collapsed investment pool.

The district could recover the latter sum later, though, Goff said.

Also included in the budget approved Monday are expenditures for a part-time principal at Olinda School, about $36,000 for elementary school computers, and salary and benefits for a districtwide curriculum coordinator position to be filled.

The district plans to offset the added expenses, Goff said, by cutting spending for equipment and furniture and by drawing from reserve funds. The district now has $3.3 million in reserve, Goff said, and projects having about $3 million at the end of the 1995-96 year.