Phillips Proposes Schools Budget

At a non-voting work session yesterday, the Sumner County School Board heard Dr. Del Phillips' proposal for the system's budget for 2015-16.

Here's what Phillips had to say about it in an email he sent to system employees today:

On Tuesday afternoon I presented the 2015/16 budget to our School Board.

 

This represents the earliest we’ve presented the budget to our School Board in many years.   It is my hope that our School Board will adopt this budget during the May 19th meeting.  If the budget is adopted by the Board of Education, I will present the approved budget at a joint work session of the County Education and Budget Committees on May 20^th.

 

I’m thrilled to say the budget is a balanced budget with funding priorities that positively impact our schools and classrooms in a number of ways.

 

First and foremost, this budget continues our efforts to increase funding for classroom technology by adding another $250,000. This brings the total amount we are spending annually on classroom technology to $750,000.  This is a dramatic improvement over the $20,000 per year we had budgeted for technology in the 2011/12 budget.  These funds go directly to each school based on student enrollment. The principal at each school decides how best to utilize these funds to increase the effectiveness of teaching and learning. 

 

This budget also continues our School Board’s efforts to eliminate our district’s dependence on voluntary fees paid by parents. We’re doing this by eliminating student fees in elementary and middle schools and by raising our district’s instructional allocation for classrooms. Over the past four years we have raised our district’s instructional allocation by  $1,125,000.  These funds go directly to the schools in four spending categories: Office, Instruction, Library, and Guidance.

 

Also included in the proposed budget are pay increases for all employees, which continues our Board’s commitment to try to provide a cost-of-living adjustment every year.  The budget also includes range increases for our district’s bus drivers and custodians that will amount to a $1.00 to $1.55 per hour raise for these employees. This increase represents the third year of our Board’s four-year plan to bring the wages of our classified employees more in line with the market wages paid by the private sector.

 

And finally, and maybe most importantly, the proposed budget includes a $1 million undesignated fund balance to help provide fiscal stability for future budget years.

 

 A copy of the presentation I made to the Board of Education, as well as a copy of our proposed budget, may be found on our BoardDocs site by following this link:

http://www.boarddocs.com/tn/scstn/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=9WCEEQ1B661A

 

And here's some analysis of the budget from local grassroots advocacy group Strong Schools:

 

Today, Director of Schools Del Phillips presented his balanced budget proposal to the School Board at a non-voting work session.

Here are some key highlights of the proposal:

• The elimination of school fees for grades K-8
• An increase in the instructional allocation for schools -- from $34 per student last year to $54 per student this year
• An approximately 2% raise for most teachers and school employees
• The addition of 50 new part-time interventionists -- certified teachers who will provided targeted instruction through the RTI2 framework
• The additional staffing needed for the opening of William Burrus Elementary
• The addition of school nurses to improve the nurse to student ratio from 1:1211 to 1:1054

This budget represents another step forward for Sumner County Schools. It eliminates K-8 school fees, gives employees a raise, adds key staff, and provides additional classroom resources.

In addition to the base raise for classified employees, the budget includes a range adjustment for bus drivers and custodians, who will see an increase of between $1.00 and $1.55 an hour. This is designed to keep our system competitive.

While there is much to applaud in this budget, the comparisons to other neighboring systems make clear we have more to do.  For example, while this budget proposes the addition of 50 part-time interventionists, Williamson, Wilson, and Rutherford counties have an average of 48 full-time interventionists.

When it comes to school nurses, the proposed budget would allow us to improve our ratio by a reduction of over 150 students, our ratio will still be one nurse for every 1054 students. Neighboring counties average one nurse for every 854 students.

Our School Board, in cooperation with the County Commission, is digging out of a deep hole. For too long, parent fees and budget cuts were the norm. School Board meetings were focused on where to cut and what purchases to delay in order to function at acceptable capacity.

It's worth noting that both the County Commission's Budget Committee Chair and Education Committee Chair attended the budget presentation at the School Board. That's a new and welcome level of engagement by our County Commission.

And it should be mentioned that in the budget crisis of 2012, Strong Schools called on the Board and Commission to start the budget process earlier in order to allow more time for feedback and adjustments. This budget, presented in May, will avoid the crisis budgeting and last minute cuts of the past.

Our School Board and Dr. Phillips are to be commended for carefully and methodically digging their way out and pushing our school system forward.

As budgets like this year's become the norm, Sumner County Schools will continue on the path to building the excellent schools our community deserves.

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