While the academic calendar is beginning to wrap up for the local school districts, the budget season is picking up with the local governments. The Orange County Board of Commissioners recently met with the boards of education for Orange County Schools and Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools to receive their budget requests and talk about funding priorities. And the conversations this year are different due to the county’s expectation for a bond referendum to fund school capital projects.
Orange County is preparing to have a general obligation bond referendum on the ballot this fall, which is part of a broader $555 million plan the county commissioners embarked on after receiving a third-party study on school infrastructure needs in November 2023. The entire plan will be supported by pay-go funding across a decade, capital investment plan finances, and the existing capital balances for the schools. But the $300 million bond would represent the majority and be sequenced across several years – with the final $100 million chunk coming in FY 31-32.
The Board of County Commissioners will introduce a first reading of the bond order next Tuesday, May 7, and formally schedule a public hearing for June 4.
Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board Chair George Griffin took time during the joint April 25 meeting to thank the commissioners for exploring this option, describing it as “going big” on an investment into public schools.
“We know money is tight and we know it’s tough times,” said Griffin, “and everybody knows public education is under attack from all fronts. In a sense, you’re our last hope – not to be too dramatic about it, but that appears to be the case. So, we want to thank you for the effort and acknowledge it publicly.”
The meeting and budgeting round is the first for Orange County Schools Superintendent Danielle Jones, who joined the district earlier this year. She said she hopes the commissioners will grant them funding to allow her district to be an “environment of continuous improvement.”
To do that, the OCS finance team is requesting more than $1.9 million for continuation expenses, including projections to meet salary, utility and fuel cost increases. The district is also requesting $3.1 million for expansion efforts, saying they hope to increase pay for classified staff to retain teachers, add positions, and stay competitive to neighboring districts.
The expansion request would also improve funding to allow for each Orange County Schools student to take a field trip, which Jones and board chair Anne Purcell said they are weighing heavily for student engagement and experiences.
“We have some schools that take several field trips a year and we have some schools that take no field trips a year. We are looking at the equity in that and making sure that all of our students have the opportunity to enjoy a field trip.”
“Part of our summer work,” added Jones, “will be to align some of the field trips that are taken. Some of that data was collected last year, but we really want to create learning experiences for students. [It is] more than just going to the zoo, [we’re] making sure it connects with our curriculum and that we come back are able to have meaningful discussion, and projects or assignments based around the trip they were able to go to.”
Orange County Schools also flagged around $8.2 million in leftover unfunded requests for the county board, which was largely improved compensation for licensed and non-licensed staff.
CHCCS leaders, meanwhile, said the district is 97 percent staffed coming into these budget discussions, which is better than prior years. But part of that is due to spending from the district’s fund balance to compensate employees – something that Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Scott said turned into a “disturbing” trend this winter.
“We very quickly realized that we were in a deficit spending situation,” he told commissioners, “and extrapolating that out over the course of the remainder of the [academic] year, we’re expecting a $2.5 million loss.”
To help immediately shore up spending, CHCCS cut all out-of-state travel, implemented a hiring freeze at the central office, and talked with school groups to eliminate positions based on attrition and reorganization of roles. Scott said those steps are already set to prevent some of that deficit spending, but not all of it. To help recoup that funding and prevent having an imbalanced budget, CHCCS is requesting $6.1 million for its continuation of operations – which combines that gap with expected salary and supplement increases.
Scott said none of those changes are yet finalized and that amount of continuation funding from the county would allow all those condensed positions to be reinstated.
“Again,” he said, “this is designed as a corrective action plan. It’s not to say that if we don’t get the funding we need, it will be the final result of where the board goes. But at this point, it was designed by the administration to kind of stop the bleeding.”
Griffin added that the district is proud of its variety and quality of programs its able to offer to its students and families. But he described this budget cycle as “a tipping point” for the district and, based on the costs and availability of funding, acknowledged some things will likely have to change.
“[We’re] really trying to get our general public to understand that it’s not anybody’s fault,” said the school board chair. “But it’s realistic that the way things are headed now, we’re not only going to have to be belt-tightening, but we’re going to have to reduce some programming and some staffing.”
In addition to the continuation request, CHCCS shared it had an expansion request of $2.3 million in funding.
The Orange County Board of Commissioners is set to hold several budget work sessions in May to discuss how the school districts’ funding requests fit in with the rest of the county’s fiscal year. Elected officials are slated to meet on May 14, May 16, May 23, May 28 and May 30 to begin parsing out the budget details and will vote on a final budget in mid-June.
The full April 25 Board of Orange County Commissioners meeting can be watched here.
Featured photo via the Orange County government.
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