Whitfield County Schools Chief Financial Officer Kenny SheppardDALTON, Ga. – The Whitfield County School Board approved a 2 percent increase in its preliminary budget for next year, despite expecting a more than 6 percent decrease in revenues.
The budget uses reserve funds to make up the difference. The board approved the budget at the regular meeting Monday evening.
The board will hold a specially called meeting at 7:30 a.m. June 22 to vote on the final budget.
Chief Financial Officer Kenny Sheppard told board members the school system’s reserve fund is expected to be about $9.5 million at the end of the year. That number will allow them to draw on some reserve funding in order to not make drastic cuts to the budget this year.
“Knowing we are in a slow recovery process, we wanted to minimize the impact on the staff,” Sheppard said after the meeting. “But there’s not a lot of wiggle room in this budget.”