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Date: 4/13/2021
NORTHAMPTON – During a special meeting on April 6, the Smith Vocational and Agricultural School Board of Trustees discussed and approved the budget for the fiscal year 2022 (FY22).
Smith Vocational Superintendent Andrew Linkenhoker said overall the budget would increase by almost 4 percent to $11.8 million.
Linkenhoker explained that one of the biggest percentage decreases in the budget was the costs for textbooks.
“The biggest percentage cut is in textbooks; they went down approximately 23.5 percent. The major cause of that is that there is less of a need for books for next year. We are in very good shape as we end the year, which will allow us to pre purchase many supplies, including textbooks, for next year,” he said.
Conversely, the biggest percentage increase in the budget came from an increase in the District Wide General Supplies section.
“That is going up for a few reasons and one is the cost of paper. I was at Lowe’s and Home Depot over the weekend and I cannot believe the cost of wood right now, so the cost of paper is going up unfortunately. We found in the past there have been expenses charged to different lines that are truly district wide expenses,” he said.
In terms of admissions, Linkenhoker said he expected an increase in non-resident students for the 2021-2022 school year.
“We are projecting more students next year; we are budgeting eight additional non-resident students and that is still a conservative number. I believe we will have more than 408 non-residents students on campus,” he said.
With more non-resident students, Linkenhoker said the school could potentially increase revenue for the next year.
“In the FY22 budget, the tuition rate is going to be $18,679 per non-resident student. So, more kids and more money per student increases potential revenue,” he said.
Overall, Linkenhoker said total applications were up to 253 after a down year in 2020.
“Our total number of applicants is now up to 253, so that is a great number and is higher than last year. We are still not where we were a couple years ago, but in light of COVID-19, we are extremely happy with 253 applicants at this point,” he said.
With more applicants than in 2020, Linkenhoker said he wished the school could take everyone.
“One of the concerns many people in the state have is we are becoming selective and not taking everybody. I can tell the community that if we had more seats and a bigger school, we would take more students. I would love to take all of the students who apply here, they deserve to be here, but we simply cannot,” he said.
With little discussion, the board unanimously approved the FY22 budget.
The Smith Vocational Board of Trustees next met on April 13.