CLINTON - Preliminary figures for the next fiscal year indicate Clinton School District's education fund is expected to take a hit, but officials aren't alarmed.

The 2009 fiscal year budget will be final next month, but business manager Rick Imig updated the school board Tuesday. Imig said the education fund is expected to lose about $1.65 million during the next fiscal year, but that was to be expected.

"We added seven new teaching positions, full-day kindergarten for the first time and several costs went up such as special education services, food and fuel," Imig said. "With the first year of kindergarten, we had to order new supplies for classrooms and things of that nature that aren't yearly expenditures."

Superintendent Jeff Holmes said the deficit isn't alarming because it isn't part of a trend. Additionally, the district is attempting to keep classes sizes low and the district has plenty in reserves to cover the deficits.

"The district has to watch all expenditures, but in addition to that, we also need to look at the big picture and how our students will benefit," Holmes said. "All-day kindergarten is a perfect example. We were only one of a handful of districts in the state that didn't offer full-day kindergarten until this year. But, we know that it will benefit our students and our district down the line."

The building fund also could see a deficit. Imig estimates the building fund could lose about$1 million over the next year; however, a number of large projects are being completed and officials budgeted $250,000 to fix the ongoing water leakage problems at the new junior high school.

"Our belief is that we will be able to recoup that money because it wasn't built properly," Holmes said. "We have talked with those who worked on the construction project and everyone realizes mistakes were made, but we have to fix the problem. We included the money in the budget but we expect those responsible for the problems to repair the project in good faith."

Other ongoing projects include the building of a bus garage, the high school green house, a water remediation project at Washington School and the resealing of the track at the Clinton High School.