Superintendent Eric Arena presented the 2022-2023 proposed school year budget at a public meeting on Monday.
Arena presented a slide show that walked through key parts of the budget, how the schools have improved over the last year and how the budget has changed from the previous year.
Overall, the budget increased about five percent from last year’s budget, going from $41,558,241 (2021-2022) to $43,792,628 90 (2022-2023). Part of this differentiation stems from the COVID relief funds that the school still has to use. From Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief II, there is about $1.6 million left and for ESSER III, all $8,113,458 is left. According to Arena, about 90 percent of the proposed budget will be going toward staff costs that prepare for the increase in salary and benefits, inflation, supply-chain issues, recession, and the safety of staff. The rest of the funds is used to support the schools, students and other projects the schools are working towards.
“We base the budget on the numbers that we have, presently, with a little bit of growth that we might be able to anticipate,” said Arena. “The Board of Education’s approval expenditure should be based on the board’s vision, mission and goals of our charter school system.”
The charter school system’s goals are to ensure high levels of performance for all of the students in Putnam County, to ensure fiscal responsibility and effective resource stewardship, to develop leadership and staff capacity throughout the school system and to actively engage students, parents and community stakeholders in that process.
“One thing I want to touch on is SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax). Basically, one cent of all eligible goods goes into the coffers, that we can use to offset expenses and not have to charge taxpayers or property taxes,” Arena told the crowd.
The first SPLOST was created in 2000 and has ever since been a part of the budget for the school system. SPLOST can be used for such things as buying school buses or fixing and maintaining buildings. SPLOST cannot be spent on salaries or benefits but can be used toward renovations and additions to the schools, such as technology. In January 2022, SPLOST 6 began and will end after 60 months, if the max is not met before that time limit. If a max is reached before 60 months, SPLOST 6 will automatically be capped, and collections will end.
“This is what a lot of people refer to as a user tax,” said Arena. “Anybody coming into our community that is buying gas or food or coming to the lakes and using that, no matter where they’re from, they leave their tax dollars here to help offset the cost of education or educational expenses.”
During the presentation, Arena did note to the audience to keep in mind that the budget has to remain competitive due to the governor’s mandated pay raise for faculty and because there is currently a struggle to find bus drivers for the school system.
“As you can see, in order to run a balanced budget, our expenditures are actually about $6 million less than our revenue. So, we’re going to have to dip in the fund balance if all of the estimated expenditures are used,” Arena said towards the close of the presentation. “But I can tell you that in my tenure here, in a decade, we do a pretty good job of creating a budget anticipating the worst. We always bring that budget under anywhere from three percent to eight percent, typically annually.”
Next Monday at 5 p.m. there will be another public meeting and the normal Board of Education meeting will follow at 6 p.m.