Small increase in Haywood schools budget
Haywood County’s high-performing public schools will see a small budget increase for the FY 2018-19 school year, but at the same time takes care of some critical needs, including teacher supplement pay that helps attract and retain the best instructors.
“I feel like this year’s budget addresses several issues that we as a board have tackled,” said Chuck Francis, chairman of the Haywood County School Board. “One of the items in the budget I’m really pleased about is we did fund the additional school resource officer out of our local budget,” Francis said. “That will make Canton Middle School and Bethel Middle School each have their own, instead of splitting an SRO. That makes five total.”
Of the $17.7 million budget’s 37 separate program areas, school building administration saw the largest percentage increase of any program area, almost 22 percent — largely due to decreased state funding. School building administration, however, accounts for just 2.5 percent of the budget in any given year.
The largest single segment of the local current expense budget is non-instructional support, which makes up 42 percent of the budget and increased 1.81 percent this year, thanks to insurance cost increases and the hiring of several skilled trade positions.
The budget for classroom teachers, which typically makes up about 11 percent of the total budget, is also up by almost 4 percent most because of increased insurance, Social Security and retirement costs.
That figure doesn’t include a revamped teacher supplement structure, according to HCS’ Finance Officer Angie Gardener.
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Instead of a three-tier system that tops out at 5 percent of annual pay, the new system is graduated on a five-year basis and tops out at 7 percent; Interim Superintendent of Haywood Schools Bill Nolte said the change would help Haywood remain competitive with surrounding counties, “particularly to our east.”
One of the few knocks on the new budget is the continuing appropriation of fund balance to cover gaps in funding.
“No board really likes use fund balance to balance the budget,” Francis said of the $1.32 million appropriated this year, up from $1.11 last year. “However, if you look at where our fund balance is, it will easily handle that and has for the last few years. Therefore there’s been a trend that we have used fund balance but it has not become an issue.”
