With a projected cuts in state and local funding for next year now reaching $12.1 million dollars, the Moore County Board of Education on Monday night, April 11, decided to dig deeper into its fund balance, while asking the Board of Commissioners for $3.1 million in additional local funding.
If approved, county taxpayers’ contribution to the $90.2 million budget proposed for Fiscal Year 2011-2012 would jump from $26.1 million to $29.2 million.
Funding for Moore County Schools [MCS] has been a moving target as information continues to filter down from Raleigh. State government provides the lion’s share of MCS funding.
State budget cutters, facing their own revenue shortfalls, have continued to whittle away at funding for local school systems, including Moore County’s. A FY 2011-2012 Budget that anticipated a $8.2 million revenue shortfall when first presented to the Board of Education a few weeks ago now includes a $12.1 shortfall, including the loss of $5.2 million in federal stimulus funding; a $5.4 million cut in state funding; and approximately $1.5 million in additional new “pass through” costs from the state.
Superintendent Dr. Susan Purser’s original budget proposal recommended the elimination of ninety positions, including teaching, central office, and instructional support staffing. Other strategies for saving money included consolidating bus routes, which will require staggered school opening and closing times; reductions in middle school athletic funding; realignment of orchestra and band programs; and increasing the formula ratio at each grade level by one student, which means more students for each teacher and teacher’s assistant; and other measures.
Altogether, those cuts represented $5 million in savings, and Purser initially recommended pulling $3.2 million from the MCS fund balance to cover the rest of the $8.2 million shortfall.
As the budget knife in Raleigh cut closer to the bone, the Superintendent revised her budget recommendation to include the consolidation of the Academy Heights Elementary year-round program at Pinehurst and West Pine Elementaries, as well as more reductions in staffing and closing MCS for a sixth day in December. However, those additional cuts still did not compensate for the loss of state and federal funding.
To make up the remaining shortfall, Purser recommended the Board pull $5 million from the fund balance, which would still leave an $2.1 million in expenses unfunded next year. With the fund balance currently standing at approximately $8 million, her recommended budget would seize over half the account, which exceeds the suggested minimum safety level.
Purser told the School Board that she had looked at everything and in every place to find cost savings. She explained that she reviewed the feasibility of dipping so deeply into the fund balance and felt confident that she could make it work — but asked the Board to point the way to deal with the $2.1 million still unfunded in her budget.
“Do you want us to go back on the $2.1 million and identify additional cuts?” Purser asked. “Or do you want us to dig deeper into the fund balance? Is there another recommendation or option or combination of options that you want us to pursue?”
“Or, do we ask for help?”
With Federal stimulus funds drying up and the State facing its own budget problems, help can only come from one source: county taxpayers.
With few other alternatives at hand, Board Chair Laura Lang said: “We have met with the County Commissioners and told them we are trying to be fiscally responsible. It won’t be fun to go back and say we were wrong and that we will have to ask for more money this year.”
“It’s important to share in the education of our kids,” Lang continued. “We have tried to make our schools like a household — that is, turning off lights and A/C, saving fuel, and other cost saving measures — and our staff have done a tremendous job of looking for places to cut. But it’s not fiscally conservative of us to use our rainy day account instead of going to ask for more. It’s not fair to dip our fund balance that low. We need to find a way to have them work with us.”
Also unwilling to further drain the fund balance was former Board Chair Kathy Farren, who instead moved to amend Purser’s recommended budget.
As approved by unanimous vote, the Board of Education adopted a proposed budget that pulls $4 million from the fund balance — which would maintain the account at the minimum safe level — and seeks an additional $3.1 million from the county, for a total of $29.2 million in local funding.
What sort of reception that idea will receive from the Board of Commissioners is not clear; they have included in their short-term goals for the current year holding the line on property taxes and continuing to cut the county’s $70 million budget, more than a third of which already goes to education.
