By eric yi and shiv bhandari
Air conditioning, speedy internet, a seemingly endless supply of food at lunch and a green quad are things too often taken for granted at 10600. Everything has a cost, but we don’t usually think about how these budgets are decided.
Raising and managing the St. Mark’s budget is a year-round effort, headed by Chief Financial Officer Suzanne Townsend and the Business Office.
“Every year our operating budget funds the school’s operations,” Townsend said. “We send out budget requests in September along with information about how much a program spent to those with budget oversight responsibilities, and then we let them know how much money they’ve been allocated.”
But before funds can be doled out to various different programs, the Business Office must determine the revenues and expenses which both totaled around $44 million each for the 2024-25 fiscal year.
“Two-thirds of our revenue comes from tuition, and two-thirds of our expenses are from payroll and benefits,” Townsend said. “We use a matrix system that helps us arrive at how much we need to increase tuition in order to have the salary increase, and that’s how we hope to achieve balance.”
In another attempt to achieve financial stability, St. Mark’s allocates funds from the previous fiscal year for the next one, increasing security and confidence with the budget.
“Whatever was raised through June 30 is applied to the next year,” Townsend said. “That way, we’re not spending the year chasing those dollars which is great and works out much better since we know how much we have from the beginning.”
And in order to account for any unexpected situations that might warrant a need for extra finances, the budget has a cushion to fall back on if needed.
“We have a thin contingency built into the budget,” Townsend said. “We always enroll more boys than we expect, and the budget has always been less than what we end up raising, so we can ensure that we achieve a surplus and stay balanced. In addition to that, we have an endowment comprised of many different funds, a majority of which are restricted.”
Similarly, excess or unused finances are put into savings to be used for future occasions, gradually generating an accessible reserve that can be used if needed.
“We have a reserve for future operations that’s an accumulation of surpluses over the years,” Townsend said. “We can use it for various things like debt retirement, for example, but it’s always used for the betterment of the school to help our programs and support our boys.”
Managing the operating budget is no easy task, but with the digitization of most processes after the 2019 tornado and the efforts of everyone in the Business Office, St. Mark’s is able to fund its many departments alongside projects like the upcoming Zierk Athletic Center.
“It really is like a series of levers,” Townsend said. “If we increase some budget over here, then we’re going to have to find some other revenue source over there to cover it. It ends up coming together really well every year.”
But just because St. Mark’s may be able to accommodate many different programs of varying costs doesn’t mean that every department receives the same allowance: how much each department receives is directly related to its requirements for budget.
“I wouldn’t say that there are inequalities in the budget,” Townsend said. “The scope of the budgets are different, and there are just certain sports that are inherently more expensive, like crew. We make sure that they get all the funding that they need to do what they need to do. The budget required for a tennis program isn’t going to compare to a budget required for a football program. We can’t give each department 10 percent of the budget; it just wouldn’t work that way.”
And if, for example, a sports team decided they needed more funding for new equipment, the director of the team’s budget must submit a request with valid reasoning if the proposed increase is more than 5 percent from the previous year’s amount.
“Usually we don’t have to change requests,” Townsend said. “We want people to know that they won’t be punished if they don’t spend all their budget in a given year because it ends up coming back and going into the surplus. As a result, in the 22 years that I’ve been here, we’ve never had a deficit year.”
To help avoid such drastic increases in the budget, the Business Office optimizes their spending by anticipating future advancements, lessening the risk of unnecessary spending.
“Rather than being responsive, we try to be proactive,” Townsend said. “We look into the future and plan for obsolescence because you’re always going to have that with technology. We try to run the school in the same manner.”
Planning for the future while maintaining proper operations in the present is a delicate task, similar to managing a household, but, with the collective work of the Business Office, St. Mark’s is able to fund its goals, everything from keeping the AC cool to building a brand-new gymnasium.
“St. Mark’s is like any business,” Townsend said. “Except we’re in the business of educating boys and staying true to our mission.”