Burbank to Work on Remedy for Day-Care Center’s Fiscal Ills

The Burbank Unified School District Board tonight is expected to help solve the fiscal problems of a child-care center that has run up a debt of more than $507,000 over three years.

District Supt. Arthur Pierce said that he will ask the board to authorize him to make a new agreement between the district and the center’s clients--the City of Burbank, NBC, Lockheed Corp. and the Burbank Studios, all of whose employees are eligible to enroll their children at the Horace Mann Children’s Center.

Each workplace is given a number of slots for enrollment at the center. An independent auditor hired by the district recommended that the city and the companies be required to fill their slots or surrender them to other parents inside or outside the member companies and city.

Other measures to be considered by the district board may include increasing enrollment at the center, keeping monthly enrollment records and studying whether to increase parents’ fees.

The center, which cares for 180 children ages 2 to 5, is administered by the school district and is financed by enrollment fees. The fees range from $80 to $115 a week.

School officials said the deficit was caused in part by parents pulling 41 children out of the center last year, when the future of the program was uncertain. The board voted this month to keep the center open for at least another year while looking for ways to erase the debt.

The audit, conducted by the accounting firm of Vicenti, Lloyd and Stutzman, concluded that the debt was largely due to a breakdown in district staff members’ budgeting and reporting and not any criminal activity. School officials had previously acknowledged mismanagement of the center’s $750,000 annual budget.

The audit said that for the fiscal year that ended in June, 1985, expenses exceeded budget by $45,683, and revenues fell short of expectations by $173,745.

Also, in the 1985-86 school year, actual revenues collected from parents fell short of budgeted revenues by a substantial amount, the audit said. Expenditures were $135,446 over budget during the 1985-86 school year, the report said.

Former Dist. Supt. Wayne Boulding said the debt went unnoticed until last year because the budgets for three of the district’s child-care programs were lumped together and did not reflect the deficit of the Mann Center.

The board is holding its regular meeting tonight at 7 because of board members’ vacation schedules. The meeting will be held at the district headquarters at 330 N. Buena Vista St.