After months of meetings and wrangling over next year’s budget, the Sitka School board heard some good news this week — about this year’s budget.

Fiscal Year 2016, which ends in a week, will close out with a quarter-million dollar surplus.

District business manager Cassee Olin told the board at its regular June meeting Wednesday night (6-22-16) that the surplus was concentrated in one area:

“Maintenance was the big winner of our categories, as I say. It was a significant surplus of $291,570. Utilities and heating fuel were the biggest savings for the district, due to the high school and the middle school being solely dependent on their electric boilers. And the mild winter contributed to savings, and the low rates we are currently receiving from the City & Borough for the on-demand electric service.”

Both Sitka High and Blatchley Middle School are equipped with interruptable electric boilers, which can be turned on and off by the Electrical Department to manage load. This forces the district to budget conservatively, since Olin never knows if she’ll be buying electricity or heating fuel — though prices for both are pretty good right now.

Because the service is interruptable, the city discounts electricity used to run the boilers by about 40-percent over regular consumer rates.

The school district finished under-budget in several other areas as well: It paid about $90,000 less in salaries than expected because of some vacant positions; and insurance benefits were under budget by $216,000 because of a lower-than-expected increase in premiums.

Offsetting those gains, however, were several over-budget categories: the homeschool program was almost $45,000 over budget; and student activities went over budget by more than $50,000. The district also transferred money to balance some program budgets: Community Schools received $20,000, and Ventures received $45,000 — in both cases to cover deficits.

Nevertheless, that still leaves more than $200,000 to redistribute for next year. The administration decided to put half in savings, and use the other half to defray the cost of new English Language Arts Curriculum for elementary and middle-school grades beginning next fall.

The next regular school board meeting will be on Thursday, August 25, the day after school begins this fall.