School budget passes Education Committee

The 2008-09 Warren County school budget has passed through the county’s Education Committee with essentially none of the line-by-line scrutiny of previous years.
The school budget consists of three parts ‘ the Federal Projects Fund, the Central Cafeteria Fund, and the General Purpose Fund.
Estimated 2008-09 totals for the three funds are:
‘ Federal Projects ‘ $4,364,987
‘ Central Cafeteria ‘ $3,280,900
‘ General Purpose Fund ‘ $42,503,900
Director of Schools Dr. Jerry Hale estimates the school system has approximately 6,300 students, with another 135 in pre-K, which is not part of the BEP (Basic Education Program).
‘We’re over 6,400 now,’ Hale said. ‘The largest we’ve ever been.’
Much of the school’s budget comes from both federal and state funds, with the main portion of the remaining funds coming from local option sales tax receipts.
Education Committee chairman Bryan Denton asked Hale to explain the budget, particularly the General Purpose Fund, which is broken up into federal, state and local funds.
‘I guess you’re probably more interested in the first part, which is local taxes,’ Hale said. ‘You’ve heard the term ‘maintenance of effort’ and of course that applies to us. The county is obligated to fund the schools at the same level as they did the prior year, unless the student population drops, which it didn’t.’
The total local taxes this year came to $11,571,878, which comes a combination of local option sales tax and property tax.
‘The figure we have on local taxes came out of director of accounts Linda Hillis’ office,’ Hale said. ‘That’s the dollar amount. We did not ask for an increase. Now how you get there, that’s up to all of you.’
Hale pointed out if there is a decrease in sales tax, then property tax would have to make it up.
‘There are two major categories there,’ Hale said. ‘So if one drops, the other has to increase to get the same figure.’
Hale says the county doesn’t know how much money will come from the state this year.
‘The BEP is an estimate,’ Hale said. ‘We won’t have our final figures on that until July, but that’s the estimate we were given when we did this.’
During the discussion, Hale also went over the Federal Projects Fund which includes No Child Left Behind, the special-ed program, and vocational education.
Hale then addressed the Cafeteria Fund.
‘That’s a self-sufficient program,’ Hale said. ‘No local tax dollars in it. The revenue side of it includes lunch payments children, lunch payments adults, income from breakfast and a la carte sales. That’s what we get locally, but the main source of income is federal government reimbursement.
‘It’s based on free and reduced lunch,’ Hale continued. ‘Warren County Schools right now has a free and reduced lunch rate of 56 percent of the students. That makes us a poverty system as far as that goes, so we get more money that way than anywhere else. It has to be spent within the program. There is a fund balance ceiling, and if we get above that we have to write a plan for the state on how we’re going to expend that money, and usually what we do with that is buy our replacement equipment for our kitchens.’
Hale says this is one place where costs are expected to go up significantly.
‘You might want to notice on food supplies we spent right at a million dollars this year,’ Hale said. ‘Next year we’re projecting $1.6 million. Food is going up.’
Committee members voted unanimously to pass the budget as presented and present it to the Budget and Finance Committee for final approval.