The Vance County school system is looking for almost $1 million more in county funding in the fiscal year starting July 1 than it received this year.
A proposed budget that totals more than $72 million will go before the Board of Education for formal action at its regular meeting Monday night, but the vote to send the proposal to the county Board of Commissioners should be little more than a formality.
It also might have little bearing on the funding plan under which the school district actually operates next year.
The school system takes the first shot at budgeting for next year without knowing how much money the state and county will contribute. Those annual uncertainties are increased this year by the prospects of a state lottery beginning in the fall and the state’s always-mysterious plans regarding the Leandro low-wealth-county court case.
Just in case that wasn’t enough to confound Superintendent Norm Shearin, Finance Director Rudi Ligon and the school board, the district awaits final word on its application for Quality Zone Academy Bond money and the prospects of a local 1-cent sales tax devoted to school capital needs.
Ligon told the school board at a budget work session Thursday night that the QZAB money — a $2 million no-interest federal loan distributed through the state and paid back over a dozen or more years — is almost a sure thing.
The state received applications for more money than it had available, and Shearin was worried that Vance would be turned down because it received $1.45 million in QZAB money last summer. But Ligon said the fact that the Vance school system has spent all but $35,000 pushed Vance ahead of school districts that have been slow to use their money.
The QZAB money can’t be used for new construction. The school board has already approved a plan for using the new money, the biggest elements of which are a new roof at Northern Vance High School, air-conditioning renovations at Southern Vance High School, and energy-efficient replacement windows and other renovations at E.M. Rollins Elementary School.
Some of that work was included in the school system’s $28.1 million facility-needs proposal that the Board of Education submitted to the county commissioners in December, so the QZAB project would chip away at the need for a bond referendum or other capital funding plan.
If there’s lottery money or a sales tax increase, which would produce an estimated $3 million a year, the funds will go straight into the capital budget, Ligon said.
All of the unknowns aside, here’s the bottom-line request for county taxpayers: In the Vance County budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1, the school system wants $7.35 million in current-expense funding, an increase of $500,000; $885,604 in capital outlays, an increase of $470,000; and a continuation of the $1 million the county has pledged each year to supplement teacher salaries. The total increase in county appropriations would be $970,000.
Ligon said the $500,000 increase in operational funding from the county, a 7.3 percent increase, does not represent any new programs or staff. It’s the amount needed to give locally funded staffers the same pay raise the state anticipates giving the teachers it pays for, 3 percent, and to cover a 20 percent jump in retirement and health insurance expenses.
Considering inflation, school board Chairman Tommy Riddle said, “we’re not getting a raise, we’re getting a cut” in salaries for school personnel.
As for the insurance costs, Ligon said the state recommended using 10 percent as the estimated increase for budget purposes, “but I didn’t feel safe with that.”
The school system’s health insurance didn’t increase this year, so Ligon fears a massive increase in July to allow the insurer to catch up with soaring health care costs. The school system already pays $3,431 per year per employee for health insurance. Employees who join the family plan must pay $400 a month themselves.
The local appropriation in the school district’s budget does not include $1 million a year the county pays to provide a local supplement to teachers who get their base salary from the state. Vance County teachers received $2,500 more per year than their state-set salaries.
The county’s fund covers the extra money for 400 teachers, but Vance has about 625 teachers, meaning that the school system must find $562,500 elsewhere in the budget for salary supplements.
There are few big-ticket items in the $3.42 million proposed capital budget, which includes the QZAB money and $534,631 in funding from the state based on school enrollment (about 25 percent of that is carryover from this year).
The $885,604 sought from the county would cover lease payments on five mobile classrooms at Dabney and New Hope elementary schools, the third of 13 annual $125,000 payments on the school system’s central office building, the first of 10 annual $28,000 payments for a recently approved maintenance building, annual payments on six maintenance vans and trucks, a $67,569 activity bus, and one of three annual $45,124 payments to cover two new full-size school buses.
The rest of the county capital budget breaks down as follows: more than $300,000 in schools’ requests for computers, desks, chairs, DVD players and other equipment (only Southern Vance High didn’t ask for something); almost $127,000 in such school needs as paint, carpet, tile, concrete and three fire alarm panels; an $18,436 parking and fencing project for the maintenance department; $9,141 for 10 digital cameras and 15 camera boxes for the transportation department; and $37,780 for upgrades to the purchasing department’s facility.
Riddle and school board member Robert Duke noted that schools’ technology requests varied greatly in the per-computer price. E.O. Young Elementary, for instance, is seeking $3,500 for four computers, or $875 each, while Western Vance High School says it can get 24 computers for $12,000, or $500 each.
“You can tear up a $900 computer as easily as you can a $400 computer,” Duke said. He said some teachers and schools seek higher-level computers for “bragging rights,” not out of necessity.
Shearin assured the board that all technology requests will have to fit with the school district’s technology plan and that the system will order the same computers for the same purposes at all schools.
“All of this is not set in stone,” board member Gloria White said, a comment that could have applied to the full budget and not just technology requests.
The overall $72 million budget would be an increase of 6.52 percent from this year. The proposal would use $48.37 million from the state, $11.99 million from the federal government, $8.24 million in new appropriations from the county, $1 million from the county for salary supplements, $550,000 in fines and forfeitures, $400,000 from other sources, such as grants and donations, and $1.46 million from the school system’s fund balance.
Ligon said technology grants have swollen the fund balance in recent years, but the school system this year is spending that grant money for its intended purpose, replacing school phone systems. The phone projects and the planned 2005-06 use of the fund balance would knock the school system’s savings account down to about $500,000.