By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

ALABASTER – Through the end of its first fiscal year as a school system, Alabaster City Schools has done something “unheard of for a system our age,” according to ACS Superintendent Dr. Wayne Vickers.

“We have $10.681 million in reserve. That comes out to about 2.68 months in reserve,” Vickers said while giving Alabaster Board of Education members an update on the school system’s finances on Oct. 20. “For a school system that just finished its first year, we are in excellent financial shape as a school system. Some systems don’t have that, period.”

Alabaster City Schools wrapped up its first full fiscal year on Sept. 30 after it broke away from the Shelby County School System in July 2013.

While reviewing preliminary year-end budget numbers, Vickers said the city’s one-cent sales tax increase, which went into effect in 2011 and has been earmarked for the city school system for the next 30 years, generated about $1.6 million more than projected during the 2014 fiscal year.

Through the end of September, the school system had spent about 92 percent of its budgeted expenditures.

“There are still some things that have to be finalized, but those numbers are close,” Vickers said of the end-of-September budget figures.

“Any time you can come in above your revenue projections and below your expenses, you’re doing well,” Alabaster School Board President Adam Moseley said after the meeting.

The School Board voted in August to issue $120 million in bonds to construct a new high school and make improvements to the city’s existing school buildings. Vickers previously said the school system intends to break ground on the new high school off Thompson Road in November.

“We have tremendous needs, and we have the financial resources to take care of those needs for our students,” Vickers said.