Two school districts that previously tabled Carbon Career and Technical Institute’s 2023-24 operating budget recently gave it their stamp of approval.

Jim Thorpe and Palmerton both passed the spending plan this month, set at just over $8 million, after questioning why CCTI was holding almost $2 million in its unreserved fund balance instead of refunding it to the five sending districts.

“We had a great discussion concerning the budget at our most recent committee meeting,” Jim Thorpe Board President Scott Pompa said before a vote last week. “There are concerns presented over the fund balance carried by CCTI. Other districts have questioned the amount of money. Jeff Deutsch, CCTI’s business manager, and (Gerald) Strubinger, our representative on CCTI’s joint operating committee, made it clear they have future use for that money.”

Deutsch said CCTI’s total fund balance is around $4 million. Of that, $2.3 million is set aside for payments down the road such as post-employment benefits and balancing future budgets.

Keeping a health fund balance, Deutsch said, has helped CCTI to go 10 years without raising the overall financial contribution the five sending districts make toward the budget.

“If we give money back to the districts, there is a shorter time frame until we go up in our budget,” Deutsch said. “I don’t think the districts want that. Would you rather have a zero increase in our budget for seven years or we give money back and we ask you for more money after three years because our budget goes up?”

Jim Thorpe Director Cindy Henning said if local districts got money back from CCTI, they could invest it instead of the technical school reaping those benefits.

“If you only used $23,000 from the fund balance to balance the budget in the most recent year, why don’t you give schools some of that excess money back?” Henning said. “We have cut a lot to get our fund balance back up and we see you sitting on money and that makes us think we can take that money and invest it.”

Jim Thorpe will contribute about $1.46 million of CCTI’s proposed 2023-24 budget based on a five-year enrollment average, while Palmerton will contribute $1.85 million.

Palmerton’s Earl Paules, who also sits on the CCTI joint operating committee, said he has been working with Deutsch and others to come up with a policy that specifies how much fund unreserved balance the school can hold before having to spend it or give back to local districts.

“I just want to make sure there is no gray area in the policy that is written stating how much unreserved fund balance you can have,” Paules said. “Every other vo-tech school in the state follows this, but we haven’t been.”

Paules said he hopes the policy will be in place for the 2024-25 budget process.

Deutsch, meanwhile, said CCTI will continue to be fiscally responsible.

“We promised districts for years that we won’t go up with our budget until we start using our fund balance,” Deutsch said. “We are starting to move from a surplus to a deficit. In our 2021-22 audit, we had a slight deficit and I think we are going to continue to move that way. That’s part of the reason we have that fund balance.”