Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Leominster losing state funds due to lack of city reports

Tough times for Leominster, where the city's not filing their reports has resulted in a hold on state education funding: 
Because most cities pay for administrative and operational expenses for the district, like providing health-care and retirement benefits to school staff and snowplowing services, those costs are subtracted by the state to arrive at the net school spending figure, Sullivan said.
These operational and administrative expenses paid by the city are called "chargebacks" to the district.
According to Sullivan and Superintendent of Schools Jim Jolicoeur, the city provided to the district its total financial support of the schools without providing the "supporting documentation" of specific chargebacks.
The city is blaming the schools for not submitting receipts they need to put together the city audit. In fact, from what the mayor is saying, it sounds as though Leominster is going through the curse of "we don't have any idea how they figure out what we spend." ...sigh...
So far, they've held up almost half a million dollars in special education circuit breaker reimbursement and the state is threatening to hold up the March Chapter 70 reimbursement of over $3 million.

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