The DeKalb County Board of Education adopted a revised tentative budget for the 2016-17 year during a special meeting following a work session Monday evening at the Board of Education Building.
The new school budget includes $258,000 from the state to cover pay raises for certified staff. That amounts to about a $1,000 increase per employee. Plans are to give a local $500 pay raise to members of the support staff/non certified personnel.
The Board of Education has also budgeted an increase for themselves in the per diem each member receives for attending regular meetings and work sessions. Currently, board members get $50 per regular meeting and $15 per work session. The proposed increase would put their pay more in line with the county commission, members of which receive $150 per regular meeting and $75 per committee meeting/workshop. This budgetary line item in the school spending plan would increase from $6,000 to $18,900 for the year.
The proposed school budget is almost a half million dollars less than the original plan previously adopted and submitted to the county commission’s budget committee earlier this month.
The vote was 4-1-1. Board members Shaun Tubbs, Kate Miller, Doug Stephens, and Jim Beshearse voted to make the cuts in adopting the revised budget. Board member Jerry Wayne Johnson voted no and Board member Danny Parkerson passed. Board Chairman W.J. (Dub) Evins, III was absent.
The school board also voted to move $5,000 within categories of the proposed budget to begin the process of addressing coaching supplement pay inequities particularly for the football, basketball, and cheer coaches at the high school, whose supplements rank below coaches in other counties in the district and across the state. A pay plan to help rectify the inequities has not yet been approved. The vote to make the $5,000 transfer was adopted 4-2. Board members Jerry Wayne Johnson and Danny Parkerson voted against it.
Fearing that proposed expenditures might put the school budget too deeply in the red next year, the county budget committee recently rejected the original spending plan and sent it back to the Board of Education asking that cuts of at least $480,000 be made.
During Monday night’s special meeting, the school board complied, cutting a total of $480,712 including $100,000 for the cost of purchasing one new school bus and $7,500 in supplement pay for a new athletic director position. But the largest cut was $373,212 in projected increased costs for employee medical insurance. School officials originally budgeted a six percent increase for the upcoming year but have not yet been given a confirmation on actually how much the increase will be. Funds remain in the revised budget to cover some increase in costs for medical insurance and school officials hope it will be enough.
Other proposed new spending in the school budget includes:
*Funding for two and a half new positions including a new Math and RTI (Response to Intervention) teacher at DCHS and an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher.
*Funding for an additional Educational Assistant at DeKalb West School
*Funding to address inequities in supplement pay particularly for football, basketball, and cheer coaches at DCHS (pay plan yet to be determined)
*Funding to purchase one new school bus (instead of two buses)
*Funding for a new Soccer Field at DCHS
The county’s budget committee will meet Wednesday, June 22 at 5:30 p.m. at the courthouse to consider the revised school budget.
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