Director of Schools Patrick Cripps presented the Board of Education’s proposed budget for 2025-26 to the DeKalb County Budget Committee last week, which included funds for the purchase of land for a future school.
According to Director Cripps, the proposed budget includes $2,000 teacher bonuses from the state, through the voucher program to those who qualify, and $2,000 bonuses funded locally to those educators who don’t qualify for the state bonuses. Support staff would each get a $1,000 bonus funded locally with passage of this budget.
“We don’t have any pay raises in this budget but our step increases are still in there for teachers. All we have in this budget is our bonuses, and those will be funded by the state for certified staff. What’s coming from the state will be a little over $500,000 for the bonuses. About 30 people would not receive the state bonus, but we did put that (local bonus) in there for them ($2,000 each). We feel like they are equally deserving of that bonus as the others that the state recognized which is certified people with licenses. The noncertified staff would not have received anything (bonus) so we put $1,000 in for each of them for this school year. All of that $245,000 (locally funded bonuses) is coming out of our budget reserves. This is a one-time bonus,” said Director Cripps.
The budget also included $1.3 million from the school board’s $13 million school reserves for the purchase of land for a future new school. The site of the future project and whether it would be for a high school or middle school, has yet to be determined.
Fiscal agent Steve Bates suggested using local purpose or local option sales tax revenue to fund the purchase of property for a future new school without the money coming out of the school budget’s reserves.
“The school board and Director Cripps did not ask for us to take this $1.3 million out of the local purpose fund (to purchase land), but Steve (Bates) made this suggestion. The school board is trying to be proactive in looking for land to build the next school on. They are trying to put some money in their budget so they can have funding in place to buy it if an opportunity for a good piece of land comes along.” said County Mayor Adcock.
“Steve thought it wouldn’t make much sense for the school board to take $1.3 million from their budget for it when we have this local purpose tax fund from sales tax collections that we are funding new school construction out of. Steve said it would be better to take that $1.3 million from local purpose since that is what this fund is for anyway which is the construction of schools, land and things of that nature. If you choose to do this the unassigned fund balance as of June 30 in the educational capital projects (local purpose sales tax fund) would still be $16 million even after that $1.3 million comes out of it and it would not affect the payment on the new school we will be building. It has a pretty healthy fund balance. We have collected a lot of sales tax revenue over the past several years. I think this would be a better option.”
No new positions are to be created this year, according to Director Cripps, and some programs deemed not necessary or ineffective will be eliminated as the school district tightens its belt.
“We don’t have any new positions in this budget. Last year we added a couple of positions that we never filled. At this part of the year, we are cutting staff. It’s a hard thing to do but at this time you have to start tightening your belt. I understand you can’t have high pay and a thousand teachers. We are a small community, and you have to manage your money to fit community needs,” Cripps said.
The budget committee has not yet taken action on the school budget. The next meeting of the county budget committee will be Tuesday, May 27 at 6 p.m. in the downstairs courtroom of the courthouse.
