School board members Thursday night unanimously approved a $40.3 million dollar general fund budget for FY 2010, a $400,000 decrease from the system’s FY09 budget.
According to the tentative budget, local taxes will bring in almost $22 million while state QBE funds will account for another $18.1 million in revenues. Other state funds will contribute $342,000 while a quarter of a million dollars will come from other local sources. Federal ARRA funds will make up $1.1 million in the system’s revenue for the upcoming year.
“We’ve been working on this budget now since February, and we’ve had several workshops and meetings for our budget,” said School Superintendent Mike Ballew. “We’ve been over this numerous times.”
As it does each year, instruction makes up the board’s biggest budget expenditure at $26.4 million, followed by maintenance and plant operations at $3.5 million and student transportation at $2.6 million. Board members budgeted $2.1 million for school administration while pupil services will cost $1.3 million, and another $1.2 million will go toward debt reduction. Expenditures for general administration are set at $966,375 while the board will spend $755,695 for improvement of instruction and another $742,779 for educational media. Expenditures for business services account for $393,375 of the budget, school nutrition for $67,000 and $20,000 for central support services.
The system’s estimated fund balance at the end of FY10 will be $3.8 million, up $1.4 million from the balance at the beginning of the fiscal year.
Ballew said the local system is utilizing as many federal dollars as possible during the upcoming year, budgeting some $1.1 million dollars from federal funds that weren’t included in last year’s revenues.
“There’s hoops that you have to jump through for all of them, but we are trying to utilize the federal dollars everywhere we can,” Ballew said. “I think every school system will try to do that.”
According to Ballew, the federal ARRA funds include money from the stimulus program, Title I and IDEA, a special education program.
“This budget has been cut, cut and cut,” said Board Member Ervin Easterwood. “This budget was a hard one to put together. This school board has worked hard to save your tax dollars.”
In other news:
• Board members expressed concern at the number of students at Pickens High School who were absent for 15 or more days during the recent academic year. According to Ballew, 310 PHS students, or 26 percent of the school’s enrollment, were absent 15 or more days.
“We are going to be looking into that,” Ballew said. “We changed a policy where students could make up work even if they had an unexcused absence. Certainly as far as AYP goes we did make AYP based on attendance. We will again be looking at the high school and making sure we have a process in place to target those areas for next year.”
John Trammell, chairman of the board, said the board argued over changing the policy regarding make-up work for “long, cold hours” before allowing the change.
“I noticed those absences last month, and it troubled me a bit,” said Jerry Chastain. “I think we need to look at our policies and consider not giving diplomas unless they attend. I thought we had a policy in our code of conduct about seat time in class.”
Attendance Officer Shelley Cantrell reported 56 students dropped out of PHS this year, down by three students from last year.
• Lloyd Shaddix, director of operations, reported on several ongoing summer maintenance projects as well as new construction work. According to Shaddix, the refurbishing of 12 classrooms and the hallway in the kindergarten and first grade building at Jasper Elementary is scheduled to be complete by July 23. Work on five classrooms in Tate Elementary’s kindergarten through second grade building is also scheduled for completion before teachers return for pre-planning.
Jasper Elementary’s new kitchen is 95 percent complete, Shaddix said, and will be ready prior to the start of school. The school’s new gymnasium, he said, will be ready by Labor Day. The system’s new administration building is completely framed in, and both the lower and upper concrete floors are finished, he said.
• In finance news, Finance Director Amy Burgess reported the school system collected $374,954 from SPLOST III for the month of May, up $85,000 from the system’s recent average.
See June 25, 2009, print edition for a copy of the budget. |
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