Boone County Schools will receive a check this year after the fiscal court voted to reimburse them for all non-public student transportation at Tuesday’s meeting.
Rob Notton, county treasurer and finance director, detailed to the court the meaning behind the resolution.
“This is an annual resolution to apply for funds from the state,” Naughton said. “We reimburse Boone County Schools for non-public student transportation in the next month or two, and then we will receive reimbursement usually around September from the state.”
Judge/Executive Gary Moore stated it had been 100% reimbursement in the past few years.
“We’re very happy about that,” Moore said. “We had a few years where it wasn’t 100% and we weren’t able to fully fund their costs of transporting the non-public school students. We have several catholic schools in the county, we have other transportation that public schools are required to provide and this is the reimbursement mechanism that the legislation put in place many years ago to compensate public schools for this transportation.”
“Why does it change sometimes?” asked Commissioner Cathy Flaig.
He reminded her that number of students fluctuates through the years.
“It’s really based on the state pool,” Moore said. “And how many counties apply. We’ve had some counties add to the list through the years that’s why it was deficient at one time. The pot of money stayed the same but more counties signed up there for a few years.”
The county’s funding is a per-pupil basis, and it matters what other counties’ student counts are.
There are no county tax dollars included in this proposal.
“We reimburse Boone County Schools this fiscal year, and then we will be reimbursed by the state through one check,” summarized Naughton.