The DeKalb County Board of Education has adopted a proposed tentative spending plan for the 2013-14 school year.
To meet the state deadline, which calls for the budget to be presented to the county commission by May 15, the board met in a workshop last Tuesday, and postponed the regular meeting of the board until Thursday.
Among items cut from the original budget proposal were $50,000 to fund a full-time athletic director, and a plan to provide single health insurance coverage for all eligible full-time employees, certified and support staff.
According to new health care laws, employers are required to pay a penalty if they do not offer eligible employees an affordable health-care plan.
While school officials are fairly certain they already meet the requirements for certified personnel, support staff plans would have to be upgraded to avoid the penalty.
The school system currently pays 64 percent of the cost for certified employees with a single or a family plan, while the employee picks up the remaining 36 percent.
The system pays 51 percent of support staff coverage.
Officials believe they will be required to pay 60 percent of both groups premiums to avoid being penalized under the new act.
The penalty for not complying is apparently $3,000 per employee, per year, after the first 30 employees.
“To this day, we don't know all the guidelines,” Director of Schools Mark Willoughby said.
“I don't know how the affordable health care act is going to work out. It may be October before we know. It may be later than that. I do think it is a good opportunity to offer our employees insurance,” he said.
“I'd much rather pay our employees' insurance than to pay the penalty back to the government.”
The school system now spends $1.5 million per year on employee health care.
If a full, single-health insurance coverage plan for all eligible employees had remained in the budget, the cost to the system would have increased to nearly $2.5 million.
The system will still have to dip heavily into its own funds to balance the new budget without a tax increase if the county commission doesn’t grant the school board's request to appropriate more money from the replenishing local option sales tax or sinking fund for school operation.
The deficit could be as much as $1.7 million.
Some members voiced reservations about the proposed budget.
Lattimore said that even with the cuts the plan is in need of more trimming.
“I believe with all my heart that there is fat in this budget,” he told the board.
“There are things in here that we don't have to have to survive next year. We send a budget across the street (to the county commission) that we know we don't have to have, and we're asking the county commission to do our job,” the chairman said.
“When we have sent budgets across the street in the past and we have felt like they have tried to line item things out of our budget, it has infuriated this board. Now we're asking them to do the exact thing that has infuriated us before. It's our job to trim out the fat in this budget.” Lattimore opined.
“We've got to do what's in the best interest of the children above everything, and we've got to do what's in the best interest of the employees of the school system, but we've also got to do what's in the best interest of the taxpayers of DeKalb County.
“When you send a budget across the street and you are asking for a 50 or 54-cent tax increase, you're asking the little old lady that's on her Social Security check that's having to pay her property taxes on payments because she can't afford to pay it all at one time, you're asking her to pay more.
“The people with the million-dollar lake homes, they won't have a problem paying that. They think we have the lowest property tax rate they ever saw in their life. The little old lady who is just barely making it, how is she going to pay an extra 54-cent tax increase when she can barely make it now? What medicine does she quit taking next year to pay this?” Lattimore questioned.
Board members voted 4-1 to approve the  budget, with John David Foutch, Kenny Rhody, W.J. (Dub) Evins, III, and Billy Miller voting for the plan, and Chairman Johnny Lattimore dissenting.
Doug Stephens was absent, and while Charles Robinson was present during much of the meeting, he left before votes were cast.
The plan will now goes to the county  budget committee to be approved or sent back for revisions.
All county budgets must be adopted by August 15.