School officials, Hamilton County commissioners debate funding

County commissioner Tim Boyd looks over architectural drawings for a proposed vocational high school he'd like to see built on Chattanooga State Community College's campus in this file photo.
County commissioner Tim Boyd looks over architectural drawings for a proposed vocational high school he'd like to see built on Chattanooga State Community College's campus in this file photo.

Hamilton County Commissioner Tim Boyd is against a proposed school property tax increase partly because he thinks administrators at the Hamilton County Department of Education don't need a 5 percent raise.

Boyd, an East Ridge resident, recently took aim at central office salaries, saying the district spends about $7 million on some 80 employees, including 19 who make more than $100,000.

"If you give a 5 percent step raise to the administrative staff, that's $350,000," Boyd said. "You could have six or seven or eight teachers for that."

But when Boyd issued a list of administrator salaries, a couple of facts came back to bite him.

One of the people on Boyd's list is deceased.

"I offer my apologies to their family," Signal Mountain school board member Jonathan Welch wrote in a rebuttal to Boyd.

Welch went on to say the $7 million spent on administrators is 2.1 percent of the district's $345 million general purpose budget - an efficient percentage that private businesses would envy.

And Boyd mistakenly said the school district paid $63,932 a year to Sandy Hughes, president of the Hamilton County Education Association, the local teachers union.

Hughes said at Wednesday's County Commission meeting that union dues pay all of her salary and benefits. She offered to show commissioners her W-2 income tax forms as further proof.

Boyd didn't comment, but Brainerd Commissioner Greg Beck did.

"I feel right now kind of heavy-hearted that you had to go this far," Beck told Hughes. "There's a lot of misinformation out there. Sometimes they don't get the figures straight, the facts straight."

Boyd said afterward he relied on information from a county source and assumed it was reliable.

That exchange is part of an ongoing back-and-forth between school officials, who hope to get a $34 million boost to raise the school district's general fund budget to $379 million, and county commissioners, who control the school's purse strings.

Commissioners haven't shown any appetite for the 40-cent school property tax increase that Schools Superintendent Rick Smith proposed in mid-March. It would add about $150 a year to the tax bill on a $150,000 home.

Smith is making his case to the community in a series of 11 town hall meetings.

Meanwhile, some county commissioners - mainly Boyd and Lookout Valley Commissioner Joe Graham, the chairmen of the commission's education and finance committees, respectively - argue against giving more money to the school district, which will present its proposed budget to the county May 20.

Like a birdie in a badminton game, facts and figures are batted back and forth with a different spin from each side - and a few cries of foul along the way.

Growth money up

School officials point out that the school district hasn't had a tax increase for a decade, since 2005. The county raised property taxes by 26 cents in 2007 but kept all of that revenue - the schools didn't get any.

Even without a tax increase, Graham says the school district's total revenue has gone up by $100 million over that time, from about $303 million in fiscal 2005 to about $403 million this year. Meanwhile, the number of pupils grew only by 2,450, from 39,929 in 2005 to 42,379 now.

All of the county's "growth" money, as county officials call the revenue from new construction between quadrennial reappraisals, is always passed along to the schools, Graham said.

"We actually give them growth money without them ever asking for it," he said. "Who cares where it comes from, whether a tax increase or growth?"

But Graham's $100 million increase doesn't tell the whole story, said Christie Jordan, the school district's director of accounting and budgeting.

The county schools' share of local property tax has risen by $33 million - not $100 million - over the decade. School property tax revenue went from $98.5 million in 2005 to $132 million in 2015, according to the county Comprehensive Annual Financial Report from which Graham got his figures.

"Yes, our revenue has grown," Jordan said. "But have you looked at theirs? The county gets more of the property tax increase than we do. The county gets the growth [money] just like we do."

Between 2007 and 2014, she said, the county's property tax revenue increased from $97 million to $131 million, a 35 percent boost, while the school district's property tax revenue grow from about $111 million to $130 million, or 18 percent.

Most of the school district's funding, while passed through from the county, is from the state and federal governments and out of the county's control, Jordan said. School district employees also work hard to get grants, she said.

"They say that we're a big part of their [county] budget - and we are," Jordan said. "That's because of the money that we bring to their budget."

Fund balance 'hoarding' or 'lean?'

School officials took offense in March when Graham said the district was "hoarding" money in its fund balance, or savings, of $49 million. But he hasn't backed down.

"They are hoarding money," Graham said Wednesday. "Put it in the classroom."

But Jordan said that $49 million includes restricted funds, such $2.2 million in federal food service money, and inventory, such as light bulbs and toilet paper.

"We can't pay our bills with light bulbs and toilet paper," Jordan said.

The district's savings - roughly $34 million not assigned to a specific purpose - is about 8 percent of its $398 million budget and would cover only about four weeks' expenses.

"That is extremely lean," she said.

By comparison, the county has a $112 million fund balance. That adds up to 57 percent of its annual budget of about $198 million and could keep the county operating for seven and a half months, Jordan said.

Pay hike would cover all

At his town-hall meetings, Smith says again and again that Hamilton is Tennessee's third-wealthiest county but ranks 34th in teacher pay. Boosting pay is key to attracting good teachers, he says.

Boyd says school officials haven't told the whole story about the proposed 5 percent pay hike for teachers - because he says it will include administrators, who he doesn't think need raises.

"There's a huge difference," Boyd said. Giving teachers a raise would cost about $7.5 million, he said, compared to about $16 million for all the district's employees.

Jordan says the school district runs lean.

"There are only 21 superintendents, assistant superintendents and directors," she said. "There are only 21 to run a school system of over 6,500 employees."

Boyd's list of 80 wasn't only central office staff, she said. Some employees earn more than $60,000, including a speech pathologist, special ed diagnosticians and maintenance workers.

County Mayor Jim Coppinger, whose office will put together a budget for commissioners to vote up or down - including any increase in school funding wouldn't say last week whether he supports more money for schools or a property tax increase.

"It's premature to be discussing that," Coppinger said. "We haven't seen the [official] request from the school system."

Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/tim.omarzu or twitter.com/TimOmarzu or 423-757-6651.

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