Big budgeting decisions surround Charleston Co. School Board
CHARLESTON COUNTY, S.C. (WCSC) - The first reading of the 2024 to 2025 Charleston County School District’s budget is just over a month out, and the board still must make important decisions on a number of topics included in the budget.
Three meetings were held Monday evening including a budget workshop with the Board of Trustees, a Committee of Whole meeting and a special called meeting.
Although no major decisions were made at Monday’s meetings, each discussion is extremely important in helping the board make decisions in a budget year some have called the most difficult budget seen in years.
Cutting programs and positions is necessary for the 2024 to 2025 school district’s budget with federal pandemic money drying up.
In a closed-door executive session meeting on Monday, the board voted to approve employment contracts for next year based on the contractual obligations and/or budgeted allocations for all certified staff.
It is unknown at the moment who is and who is not still hired by the district following the decision made in the executive session. It has been a known problem the board needed to face with the budget being what to do with about 300 staff members whose salaries are being paid for with federal dollars that will soon go away.
More information on a proposed funding option was presented by Superintendent Anita Huggins, which would allow resources to be allocated to help schools in the district with students in poverty, special education or multilingual.
“You can rest assured though that our success will be measured against student outcomes,” Huggins said.
The Weighted Funding Model comes with a $30 million price tag but would allocate funding from the district to individual student needs at each school if passed by the board.
The need for a new funding model partially comes from the number of students in poverty attending non-Title 1 schools under the current funding model cannot address all students.
“We have held meetings with schools that would receive this funding and spoke with principals to see where they would want the funding to go,” Huggins said.
The topic of teacher and non-teacher pay raises has been a major discussion among the board and its budget with a variety of different options available.
The Charleston County Teacher Compensation Task Force is asking to incorporate the $5,000 bonus teachers received last year to their salary which would cost around $24 million to the district.
Other possible pay scenarios were presented with each requiring a millage increase which would increase property taxes in Charleston County.
Possible scenarios include:
- Teacher pay increase by $7,500 with a 3.7 millage increase
- Teacher pay increase by $10,000 with a 7.3 millage increase
- Classified staff to 100% of market with a 1.1 millage increase
“For a balanced budget this year, we would need the 3.8. millage increase, but we would not need a millage increase in the next two years for sustainability,” Board of Trustees Member Pam McKinney asked the Chief Financial Officer.
A few topics discussed at Monday’s meeting will be voted on at the Board of Trustees meeting on April 29, while the first budget will be presented to the Audit and Finance Committee on May 7.
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