Guilford County Schools explains $977 million budget proposal
GUILFORD COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) — Guilford County Schools has worked for months on a budget, and teachers and school staff want to make sure their needs are heard.
Superintendent Whitney Oakley Presented a budget to the school board following a rally held by the Guilford Education Association with four demands.
The school board knew what was coming in that petition after administrators met with the association earlier this spring, and Oakley says she did her best to meet those demands.
“We see our kids every single day. We give and we give, but it’s hard to go home and realize the financial struggles are still there, and it’s still hard to make ends meet,” said Jeremiah Bobbitt, a fourth-grade math teacher.
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Oakley agrees. She says the district needs to raise the teacher supplement to compete with the districts in the state.
The proposed teacher supplement recommendation for 2024-2025 is $10 million.
“It’s all on fire … Just going to the commissioner every year and trying to get what we can to make it through the next year is not a sustainable strategy,” Oakley said.
GCS currently offers the lowest supplement compared to districts like Charlotte or Wake County and is even lower than Winston-Salem.
“It’s still hard to have the American dream … So that’s why this is very important to us,” Bobbitt said.
School nutrition workers were also included in the demands. They were left out last year.
“Right now, our pay scale is one dimensional, so everybody is paid the same no matter your skillset, years of experience or anything,” Rondeeshia Wallace said.
Wallace has worked as a school nutrition employee for more than a decade and makes the same as someone who could start the same job tomorrow. She says their job is much more than making and serving food.
“Sometimes we are the first meal they have for the day. A lot of times, unfortunately, we are the last meal of the day, so we like to make sure that they’re eating,” Wallace said.
In the proposed budget, school nutrition would be brought up to the other classified employee levels with $8.6 million allotted for phase two of that staff compensation plan.
Altogether, the budget is almost $977 million dollars.
It’s less than the billion last year with an additional request to Guilford County due to the reduction in federal COVID-19 dollars, totaling $304 million.
The next step in the process is to take this proposed budget to the county. The school board will do that by May 15 after the public gets to weigh in on May 7.
You can see the whole presentation here.
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