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Community Education presents balanced-but-fragile budget; federal grant delays complicate planning
Summary
Director of Community Education outlined a proposed 2026–27 budget of just over $4.5 million in revenue and expenditures, a projected fund balance of $518,858, and warned that pending federal grants (21st Century, full-service community school) are delayed and could affect programming, particularly evening and Greenbelt Park offerings.
Aaron Bailey, the district's director of community education (introduced at the meeting), reviewed revised 2025'26 and proposed 2026'27 Community Education Fund budgets on April 13, saying the department projects revenue and expenditures each just over $4.5 million and expects a fund balance of about $518,858.
Bailey said the department served more than 16,000 unduplicated participants in 2024'25, schedules extensive facility use (142,130 hours reported) and runs programs from preschool through adult basic education and recreation. He outlined four separate community-education fund balances (general community ed, school-readiness/Hand-in-Hand preschool, unreserved early-childhood screening, and one other) and stressed they are not fungible.
The department also flagged two grant streams whose timing remains uncertain: a 21st Century Community Learning Center application that would have supported the Greenville Park community school (Bailey said the district wrote a proposal for roughly $250,000 per year) and a full-service community-school application described as roughly $600,000 over three years. Federal and state delays in awarding those grants have already forced programming adjustments: Baileys said the program curtailed weekly evening offerings at Greenbelt Park this year rather than run a Tuesday/Thursday evening schedule without committed funding.
Board members asked about the scale of grant awards, the use of school-age care levy dollars to support students with higher needs (interpreters, staffing), and how adult basic education staffing is being managed (a consortium arrangement and a recent shift to district employment). Bailey said community education has worked to braid multiple funding sources and that some program cuts were targeted rather than wholesale.
What's next: The revised and proposed budgets will come back for action at the May 11 meeting. If the pending grant decisions arrive late, administrators said they will continue to run targeted programming with braided funding and adjust evening offerings and community-site schedules as needed.
