The Omaha Public Schools board is set to vote in September on a new $481.2 million budget.
This year, the budget materials are online, along with committee presentations and a public comment section. OPS’ new fiscal year budget projects a six-percent increase in state aid, but no change in property valuations.
Dennis Pool, OPS’ Assistant Superintendent of General Administration, says it’s an effort to be transparent with OPS stakeholders about the district’s spending plan. “In the past we’ve used public forums, we’ve used open meeting kind of venues to provide information to the public. The problems with those types of presentations is that they’re very limited in space and time for people to be able to manage their schedules to get in and see these.”
Pool says the site will be updated as additional budget presentations are made. He characterizes the budget proposal as a “maintenance budget” with little growth over the current year’s spending plan.
It’s not known at this point if OPS will hold public forums on the next fiscal year’s budget as they did with this year’s.