MILL HALL — On a day when schools throughout the state closed for the remainder of the 2019-20 academic year, the Keystone Central school board received some good news during Thursday night’s voting session.

KCSD superintendent Jacquelyn Martin and business manager Susan Blesh made the presentation via Zoom and announced that the district met its 2020-21 budget goal for April — a zero tax increase and zero use of reserves.

“Our goal was, by this time, to get to a half-million dollar deficit and we have been able to come up with a valid budget right now, as of today, would be a zero tax increase without touching reserves,” Martin said.

Blesh talked about how they arrived at that point.

“The first things we did was go back to the operating budget, met with all of the budget heads and looked at everything line by line and came up with reductions. The biggest thing is that since we’re approximately 12 weeks out of school, (there are) supplies that are still in our schools, not being used … we felt that we could reduce those budget line items and use those supplies next year,” Blesh said.

There were several notable expenditures that were decreased as of April 9. They are: Reduction to operating budgets ($208,804); reduction tuition outside placement ($86,000); closure of Dickey Elementary School ($75,000); Sugar Valley Rural Charter School ($342,000); bond issuance/debt restructure ($92,131); attrition of positions ($45,000).

The total decreases in expenses is $848,935.

Blesh noted that the savings from the Dickey closure comes in the form of utilities. The savings from SVRCS assumes a pending agreement. The attrition is from a secretarial position.

The board also got a look at a five-year financial picture with no tax increase and with partial tax increases — 1.75 and 3.0 percent.

Martin said that the district’s reserves are low, but not as low as previous years.

“We’re still low. I don’t feel as dangerously low as we used to be because we put another million dollars in there at the end of last year. But at the same time, you don’t know what’s going to happen with this upcoming state budget,” she said.

According to Martin, the district is on track to receive $1.22 million in funding under the recent emergency legislation from the federal government.

One of the big question marks in relation to the 2020-21 budget, Martin said, is the final cost of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We don’t know the true cost of COVID-19 yet. We’ve been tracking every expense we’ve had related to the pandemic,” she said. “We’re keeping a close eye on that.”

Another budget update will take place at the May 7 meeting, which was originally scheduled for Bucktail High School. The board will adopt a final budget at its June 11 meeting.