Statewide coverage Monday, surrounding a letter issued in March, raised some eyebrows about school budget deficits.

The Okoboji School District received one of 60 Iowa Department of Education letters regarding a perceived trend toward negative unspent balances. The form letter was cited in news coverage Monday from Des Moines.

The Iowa Department of Education included Okoboji because of a projected negative unspent balance of $570 in the fiscal 2007-08 school year and a $548,428 negative unspent balance projected for the fiscal year 2008-09 budget.

"Projected" is the operative word, according to both state officials and a local superintendent who fielded a handful of phone calls from residents who saw the coverage.

"For a lot of districts, the '08 budget is not complete yet," said Okoboji superintendent Bob Miller.

Expenditures and revenues are still coming in for the 2008 fiscal year, making it hard for the Iowa Department of Education, or people who use information for news coverage, to determine which school districts are in true danger of falling into a trend of a negative unspent balance.

Many school districts took corrective action well before the Iowa Department of Education issued its snapshot-based advisory in March.

"What we're talking about is a negative, unspent balance and it relates to a district's spending authority," said Elaine Watkins-Miller, a spokeswoman with the Iowa Department of Education. "A school district's finance is a little different than personal finance and each district in the state has a certain spending authority. It's the amount they are allowed to spend. It doesn't necessarily mean the money in the bank. It's just meaning what they are allowed to spend for their budget."

Districts confirmed to have negative unspent balance have to provide a corrective action plan to the state department of education. In extreme cases, the state now has the authority to dissolve a school district if it can't meet budget constraints.

The March 7 letter issued to 60 school districts was intended as an informational item, however -- "just to kind of give them a head's up" as it was characterized by Watkins-Miller.

"If their actions would continue, based on previous information and if they would continue, they would have the potential of going into a negative, unspent balance," Watkins-Miller said. "Again it was just to provide information and to maybe start a discussion or dialogue about finance."

Because financial information was compiled in February and March -- and based on projections -- "you just have to take it with a grain of salt," according to Miller.

"You've got to do some real, heavy data mining to find out what's really happening," Miller said. "Our board was aware of the letter of warning that came out back in the spring. We feel very comfortable and very confident that we are not in a negative, unspent balance situation."

The letter wasn't meant to alarm people, Watkins-Miller said.

"They were based on their own projections about things that happened in past years," Miller said. "We had made adjustments last year and the year before, so that we would have a positive unspent balance -- and we do have a positive unspent balance."