The Botetourt School Board is expected to finalize a proposed 2018-19 fiscal year (FY19) budget when it meets Thursday morning in what is scheduled as its last budget work session before a public hearing next week.
Once again, the board will be offering a “best guess” on state revenue because the General Assembly adjourned over the weekend without finalizing a state budget.
The General Assembly’s committee to reconcile differences in a Senate, House and the governor’s budgets could not come to an agreement and will reconsider the budget in a called special session that has not been scheduled.
Finance Director James Lyon told the School Board last Thursday that an average of the three state budgets would provide Botetourt with about $877,000 more than the current fiscal year. Most of that is attributed to expected higher enrollment numbers.
The school division will be taking a hit on state revenues because the state recalculated the “composite index,” or the county’s ability to pay for schools.
The county’s composite index went up so state revenue based on that index went down about $250,000.
In order to meet a proposed FY19 budget that’s just over $50.7 million, the School Board is expected to send a request to the Board of Supervisors for right at an additional $700,000 over the current fiscal year— a 2.9 percent increase that amounts to $24.5 million. The school division has received the same amount of local funding the past two fiscal years, $24.2 million.
Accounting changes and how the debt service amount of $390,000 from the school’s energy savings program is handled accounts for the difference in the budget request.
The school division’s proposed budget includes a one step adjustment for all teachers and classified personnel that amounts to $563,706; a continuation of corrections for certain employees who did not get step corrections over the past several years that amounts to $281,839, and a 2 percent increase in administrative staff salaries that amounts to $68,624.
The budget also adds a SAP counselor, a speech position, the county’s share of three additional positions at the Jackson River Governor’s School, putting bus drivers on five-hour contracts instead of four hours, an adjustment for employees at the top of the pay scales, an increase in health insurance costs and funds for lease purchase of five new buses.
The budget also proposes “more of a redistribution of funds” in three areas that are more administrative changes.
One is to no longer bill individual schools by absorbing the $30,000 to $35,000 cost for bus drivers for athletic events. Those savings are intended to be used for equipment replacement. Lyon said James River High School has so much further travel than Lord Botetourt, that it impacts JRHS’s athletic budget more. The same will apply to the county’s other schools.
Changes are being made to individual school expenditures based more on the number of students to provide more equity among the schools.
The three new slots at Jackson River Governor’s School will cost $9,765. With dual enrollment classes through the school, students do not have to pay tuition for those credits like they do at Virginia Western Community College.
The expected budget request to the supervisors does not include other new positions that the administration would like to add for instruction, capital maintenance funding, funding for upgrading playgrounds at various elementary schools, additional technology funds and contingency funds.
The School Board is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the budget Thursday, March 22 at 5 p.m. in the School Board office in Fincastle.
The School Board has to send a budget request to the Board of Supervisors by April 1.
