MARSHALL — Marshall Public Schools will have a smaller deficit for this school year than the district originally planned for. At Tuesday’s school board meeting, board members approved a revised budget with a general fund deficit of $216,262, compared to the roughly $798,000 deficit included in the district’s preliminary budget.

However, MPS Business Services Director Dion Caron cautioned that the smaller deficit was also linked to the amount of federal aid funding the school district received this year.

Each year, the school district approves a preliminary budget, and later a revised budget.

“This (revised budget) is done every year at approximately this time to update the current year budget, now that we know some of the hirings and some of the things that are going to come into play this year,” Caron said. MPS had approved a preliminary budget for 2021-22 back in June.

The revised budget approved Tuesday included total general fund revenues of about $32.5 million and expenditures of about $32.5 million.

“So overall, with the preliminary budget, we’re actually looking a little better than before,” Caron said. “Again, a lot of this has to do with those federal funds, trying to offset those expenditures. We’ll have to keep that in mind, as those federal funds were one-time-only,” he said.

MPS received a total of over $1.79 million in federal COVID aid funds in the 2021-22 school year.

“The majority of those are new funds that came into play after the preliminary budget was done,” Caron said. The federal COVID revenue was 100% offset by expenditures, he said.

At the same meeting they approved a 2021-22 budget, school board members also approved parameters to help in the planning process for next school year’s budget. Factors affecting the budget range from student enrollment numbers to personnel costs and state aid funding.

On a preliminary basis, the school district is projecting a decrease in its general fund budget for 2022-23. However, a lot of factors could change and end up impacting the budget. Some of the unknowns include changes in projected enrollment numbers, technology needs, and what will happen with the COVID pandemic and COVID funding in the future.

For now, MPS is planning on conservative enrollment projections for 2022-23. The district will probably use a small enrollment increase or no increase in making budget plans, the budget parameters said.