Proposed CCS budget ups school spending by 5.5%; board approves capital, nutrition budgets

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PITTSBORO — The Chatham County Board of Education approved Monday night a budget request that saw local expense for public schools rise by nearly $2 million from last year.

The spending plan, scheduled for the 2020-21 school year and to be submitted for approval by the Chatham County Board of Commissioners, includes a requested $2.23 million increase in county funds. That jump comes in the form of $1.38 million for operating expenses for the new Chatham Grove Elementary School, which is slated to open in August, and $850,000 for teacher supplements. School board members had frozen supplement payments in January at a retreat, saying they would not be able to cover that expense.

“We can really talk about whether the state-paid salaries are competitive, and we don’t believe them to be,” Superintendent Derrick Jordan said related to county funds spent on teacher pay. “A high number of districts offer a local supplement, and that’s going to certainly be covered as a result of current expense budget.”

District CFO Tony Messer said there were some uncertainties that came when putting the budget request together, particularly the lack of a state budget — “we really are not sure as to what the impact on the fund balance is going to be yet” — and an exact cost on what Chatham Grove expenses will be — “until we actually see what those costs are, it’s still somewhat of an unknown.”

Jordan said the district would benefit from the recently-approved sales tax increase from Chatham County, but exact numbers weren’t determined yet. He also spoke multiple times to the difficulty in not having a state budget.

“Always when we’re doing budget planning, it’s a big old guess,” he said. “Certainly, this is uncharted territory in that we are operating without a comprehensive, finalized state budget.”

Another significant increase came in the form of a $320,000 increase for charter school payments, with that item now making up more than 11 percent of the district’s expenses.

The board also approved a capital outlay request of $2.3 million. Major projects in that request include $760,000 for the district’s high school 1-to-1 student laptop program and $194,000 for two activity buses.

“We’ve made very good use of this money over the years and have made effort to make sure that all of our schools still benefit,” said district COO Chris Blice. “There are some things we are unable to approve, and there are some things we make sure we do have money (for).”

The district’s nutrition budget remained at $4.625 million. Jennifer Ozkurt, the district’s director of school nutrition services, said her department was working to utilize its funds more efficiently.

“We’re able to do (no increase) because we’ve been able to do an assessment of the items we already use on the menu,” she said. “We can recreate new menu items with some of the stuff that we already use, and we can streamline some of the things that are not popular.”

Food costs increased by around 3 percent to more than $1.3 million, but other decreases in costs, like not purchasing vehicles this year, kept expenditures the same.

Reporter Zachary Horner can be reached at zhorner@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @ZachHornerCNR.