The Northport Public School Board of Education (BOE) approved its 2025-26 general fund budget totaling $6,539,409 at its regular meeting on June 9.
The proposed budget goes into effect at the start of the new fiscal year which begins July 1. The budget is based on 13.3880 mills of ad valorem property taxes to be levied on the taxable value of non-homestead and non-qualified agricultural property. Local revenues for Northport’s projected new budget is projected at $5,398,297 for the 2025-26 original budget, an increase of about $348,149 from the previous 2024-25 year due to the non-homestead property taxable values going up within the school district.
State revenues for the 2025-26 budget are projected at $869,026, down from the previous year’s total of $974,205, whereas federal revenues are $164,471, also down from the 2024-25 budget year total of $261,210.
Northport School Superintendent Neil Wetherbee said while school districts await for the state to finalize its own 2025-26 budget, the federal and state numbers included are just projections. As the Michigan legislator continues to work through its budgeting process, Wetherbee said they are monitoring what could be affected, such as categorical funding/grants to students who are at-risk or English language learners. “It doesn’t cost the same to educate every kid, so categoricals are designed to help districts that have additional expenses for students, and because we’re out-of-formula, it’s one of the biggest ways we get state aid, through categoricals. That would hurt all four districts in the county pretty heavily. None of us get per pupil (funding), so they’re basically just cutting our categoricals and giving us nothing in return if the house plan passes,” Wetherbee said. “So we don’t know what’s happening with that… so those (budget numbers) are really our best guesses right now.”
Total expenditures projected for the district in the 2025-26 year is $6,539,408, an increase of $136,328 from the previous year total of $6,403,080.
Besides inflation across the board, Wetherbee said the increase includes things like teacher raises, the replacement of Chromebooks, and diesel fuel costs for transportation. Expenditures for total instruction are projected at $2,584,206, which is a decrease of about $153,566 from the previous year’s total.
Other significant expenditure increases in supporting services include pupil support services, which is estimated at $310,664, an increase of $30,000, while central support services is $383,511, an increase of $66,832. A decrease of about $153,000 was estimated for total instruction expenditures, projected at $2,584,206 for the 2025-26 academic year.
There were also slight decreases projected for support services like pupil transportation services and plant operation and maintenance.
“We rolled the 24-25 budget over, it’s the same budget with a little bit of inflation built in and a lot of unknowns in the state and federal revenue sources,” he said. “I think we continue to be in a good position. We’ve been budgeting wisely for a long time, and so although there’s uncertainty at the state and federal level, we’re in a position that we can observe it if we have to, at least for a while. So it’s nice to have built a budget that is able to provide high quality education for our students and can compensate our staff well, but still also maintain some healthy finances.” The district’s ending unassigned fund balance for the 2025-26 year is $4,048,146, an increase from the 2024-25 original budget balance of $3,503,512. Wetherbee said while $4 million sounds like a lot of money, if the district were to stop receiving funding, it would only help them to get through about two-thirds of a school year.
“Our fund balance is healthy… It’s still within a reasonable range for the size of our budget,” he said. “If the federal government does everything they want to do, we’re looking at losing half million dollars a year, so that’s a pretty big chunk out of a $6 million budget, so you might have to tap into that $4 million for a couple of years while you readjust.”
