This year, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (CHCCS) and Orange County Schools (OCS) requested millions more in school funding to better support the growing needs of students in the county.
CHCCS requested an increase of $8,033,000 for continuation and expansion funding for 2021-22 fiscal year and OCS requested an increase of $2,893,572.
The Orange County Board of Commissioners held a joint meeting last week to discuss the budgets for the school districts of the county. Some of the goals for the funding allocation for both OCS and CHCCS are equity and mental wellness.
Each year Orange County school districts present their respective boards approved annual budgets and capital needs to the Board of County Commissioners for review and discussion.
Chair of the Orange County Board of Commissioners Renee Price said both OCS and CHCCS have similar goals in their use for funding.
“Even though their presentations looked a little different, you can see that they’re on parallel paths, in trying to bring the students back in, make up for that learning loss in the past year, and address inequities that had already been there for decades,” Price said.
Price said the county commissioners also looked at school facility needs to repair buildings beginning to deteriorate. In addition to building needs, the county wants to prioritize making sure all children are fed.
“We have a lot of children that have relied on school meals for their meal,” Price said. “We saw that in the budget and we will continue to provide breakfast and lunch to our students that need it.”
Dr. Monique Felder is the superintendent for Orange County Schools. She said how the county spends the money says a lot about what is valued.
“There are lots of needs, but we also know how critically important it is to ensure that our students get the best education they possibly can, because that too has implications for the viability and sustainability of orange county,” Felder said. “We must invest in our children.”
Felder said one area to prioritize with future funding is equity. She said this means ensuring all students have what they need to be successful in school. Another area is student mental wellness.
“We know that even outside of a pandemic that students social and emotional or their mental health and wellbeing is important and even more so in this pandemic,” Felder said. “[The students have] been very clear to remind us about their mental health. We kind of sometimes think that’s an adult thing and it’s not. Our children too have social and emotional needs. We believe that our budget that we put forth is about just that. It’s focused on the whole child – their academic selves and their social emotional mental health.”
Jillian La Serna is the Chair of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School’s Board of Education. She echoed Felder’s comments on the need for equity as a focus of budget use and mental health services for the schools.
“We brought forward some very important expansions which included support for social and emotional learning for students more mental health support that would provide direct service to students in additional to academic support at the elementary level that would provide direct academic support in reading and math in particular for students following the pandemic,” La Serna said. “We know that we needed those supports even prior to the pandemic and even more so now.”
In addition to CHCCS and OCS, Durham Technical Community College made a presentation for its funding needs.
For more information on the school budget requests, click here.
Photo via the Town of Chapel Hill
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