Christie Jordan, Hamilton County Schools director of accounting and budgetingWHAT'S NEXT?The school board will hold a budget work session at 5:30 p.m. Thursday to continue discussing next year's budget.
Hamilton County Schools officials are proposing a total budget of $383 million for the next fiscal year -- about $15 million more in spending than the current budget year.
School leaders laid out their proposal Tuesday evening to the school board's finance committee. While they expect some revenues to increase next year, the budget would require cuts in some areas because of impending spending increases in other areas.
Christie Jordan, the school system's director of accounting and budgeting, said about $12 million in cost increases were "unavoidable."
Proposed increases in spending include:
• $5 million in employee salary increases.
• $4 million to fund health insurance increases.
• $1.7 million that's expected to flow through to charter schools as they continue to add enrollment.
• $462,500 to help fund a new science, technology, engineering and math school, which will also receive funding from a state grant.
• $420,000 in extra transportation costs.
To offset the difference, school officials project they'll need to make about $3.7 million in spending reductions. That's significantly lower than in previous years, which have recently seen double-digit deficits.
"I believe this will be the lowest number the board has seen in a long time," Jordan said.
Officials suggested saving $1.5 million by restructuring next year's textbook adoption. They said they could find another $1 million in savings by reducing the amount paid out in salary increases next year.
The state has approved a 2.5 percent raise, though that will only cover the raise on the state-funded portion of an employee's salary. Hamilton County, like many systems, supplements staff salaries and the number of total staff positions so that not all are covered by the state's Basic Education Program.
As a last resort, about $1.2 million could be saved by reducing staff levels, though Superintendent Rick Smith said no more than 20 positions would be lost.
"That is the last place we like to go," Jordan said. "But when you have a budget that's 83 percent people, you don't have a lot of other places to go."
Administrators said the proposed cuts shouldn't cause severe harm to students.
"Our goal is always to protect the classroom," Smith said.
Finance Committee Chairman Chip Baker pointed out that many of the proposed revenue increases are one-time pots of money, such as increased state funding and payment in lieu of taxes revenue.
"We've got all this one-time stuff we're going to have to keep an eye on," he said.