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The Coweta County Board of Education voted to absorb up to three
further employee furlough days passed on by the state through
the remainder of the 2009-10 school year.
The Board’s action – taken at their March 9, 2010 regular
meeting – allocates local funds to offset up to $1.2 million in
cuts expected in this year’s amended state budget, which would
be passed down to local systems in the form of further employee
furlough days.
The school board approved the motion following a financial
report from school system officials that the school system
anticipated a balanced budget for the school year, based on
current trends. The balanced budget would be achieved despite
significant cuts from the state of Georgia before and after the
start of the 2009-10 financial year, which led to significant
net decreases in the school system’s operational budget below
the previous school year.
“Financially, we’re in good shape, and we’ve been careful,” said
School Board Chairman Steve Bedrosian. “I’m in favor of
absorbing the final three furlough days” during this fiscal
year, he said.
Other board members agreed with Bedrosian, noting that all
school system teachers and administrators, and most school
system support staff, had been furloughed three days without pay
during the first half of the school year, after state budget
cuts were announced in July of 2009 following the start of the
new school fiscal year.
Board member Harry Mullins said that those cuts – distributed
throughout a year’s worth of employee pay periods – were
significant, but to add another round of unpaid furlough days
spread over only a few remaining pay periods this year would
amount to very large monthly pay decreases for employees.
They would also cut a number of necessary planning days for
teachers, during which lesson plans, report cards and many other
requirements are met by teachers, he said.
Mullins noted that the Board had asked teachers, employees and
administrators last year to carefully control spending and work
through diminished operational budgets. “They did that,” he
said, “which has put us in the good financial shape we’re in.”
“We can afford it. Let’s do it,” said Mullins. Mullins said that
the decision will help employees, and will also have a positive
impact on the local community as well.
The state has not officially approved the additional employee
furlough days, and will not until the Georgia legislature
finishes an amended Fiscal Year 2010 budget in the coming weeks.
Three additional employee furlough days during the current
fiscal year ending June 30 are included in current versions of
the state’s amended budget and are widely expected.
The school board’s vote followed a report from Coweta County
School’s Assistance Superintendent for Finances Keith Chapman
that the school system had achieved cost savings throughout the
school year that had made up other state budget cuts announced
in July of last year.
Last June, Coweta County’s Board of Education adopted a General
Fund Budget for the 2009-2010 school year of $172,206,757. That
budget (funded principally by state revenues and local property
taxes) reflected a net decrease of $3.7 million over the school
system’s 2008-09 General Fund budget of $175,931,581.
After the current school year began in July, 2010, the state
announced further state budget cuts to school of $1,229,564 (in
the form of furloughs for school employees) and $2,221,778 in
other funding cuts, on top of the previous year’s spending cuts,
reducing the budget by an additional $3.5 million.
Superintendent Blake Bass said that the school system had
absorbed the additional budget cuts through postponing some
needed expenditures, such as additional school buses, careful
budgeting and control of spending. “Our employees and our
administrators have done that, and I appreciate it.”
Superintendent Blake Bass had noted that the school system had
operated in a balanced budget for several years, despite earlier
and current-year state budget cuts, and without raising local
property tax rates. Despite economically difficult times, “we
are on track to end up in good financial shape for the year,” he
said.
Bass also said that the school system has maintained a balanced
financial sheet and moderately increased its reserves for five
years through conservative budgeting. That has meant that the
school system has very slowly added programs and personnel in
better financial times, but has also meant that Coweta County
has not experienced severe program or employee cuts during more
austere times.
The school system has also maintained high academic achievement
through those periods, he noted, with all Coweta County schools
meeting state and federal academic testing requirements, and
school test and achievement measures well above the state
average and at or above national averages.
In other budget reports at the March 9 board meeting, financial
officer Keith Chapman also reported that school system sales tax
revenues were down, to a monthly collection of $1.5 million for
the latest monthly collection. The sales tax revenue is derived
from the Coweta County School System’s 1-cent Special Local
Option Sales Tax, and funds school construction and maintenance
efforts, along with other capital expenditures such as school
buses and equipment.
Despite the decrease in monthly sales tax revenues, Chapman
reported that the school system was on track to fully pay off
short-term bonds that borrowed against the current 2007-2010
SPLOST and funded the construction of the school system’s three
Ninth-Grade high school campuses and Brooks Elementary School.
“At this rate we should have enough (in collections) to fully
retire our bonds by next year,” he said.
“We promised the community that we would do that,” said Board
member Mullins. School Board members voted last year to hold off
on any further expenditure of SPLOST funds until the bonds were
fully retired, to ensure that current collections would be
sufficient.
Superintendent Bass noted that that retiring the bonds by next
year would leave the school system one and one-half years of
further SPLOST collections to fund needed school buses and other
capital improvements to county schools. |
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