The Hamilton County school board weighed in on the district’s proposed $674 million budget, with several members naming increased salaries and maintenance as their top priorities.
“I want to encourage the community, I want to encourage us as a board to also be willing to stretch the (Hamilton County) Commission’s vision of the future,” school board member Marco Perez, independent of Signal Mountain, said. “The move to really come and get closer to compensating teachers to better levels … is happening statewide, and we want to make sure that we’re also leading the charge and not falling behind.”
The board met Thursday.
The district’s $673.9 million proposal earmarks $32 million for increased compensation, giving the school board the option to give employees either a roughly 5% raise or a $2,800 flat raise. That investment also includes a pay step increase on the salary schedule ranging from zero to 2.5% per certified employee, adds more money to the district’s strategic staffing model and it ensures that certified employees who aren’t making $50,000 yet are raised to that mark, Superintendent Justin Robertson said.
School board member Jill Black, D-Lookout Mountain, advocated for the flat raise option. She compared the impact the two different raises would have on an exceptional education assistant who makes $27,700 a year. The percentage increase would result in a roughly $1,300 raise compared to the flat raise’s $2,800, she said.
“It takes all of our employees to make Hamilton County Schools work and to serve our children,” she said. “I just don’t feel good about giving someone who makes $120,000 a year, a $6,000 raise, while I’m giving someone who makes $27,000, a 1,300 raise. That doesn’t feel good to me.”
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The district’s budget proposal also includes $2 million for capital maintenance, a number school board Vice Chair Gary Kuehn, R-Ooltewah, said should be higher.
“Personally, I’m not going to vote to pass this budget whenever the time comes if there’s still only $2 million sitting in the maintenance,” he said. “I’m just one vote, so that doesn’t matter, but we’ve got to get money into the maintenance that is not going to be on a bond that’s going to be in their budget for next year.”
Last year, the district’s proposed budget increased the money it reserved for capital maintenance by $6 million, bringing the total to $8 million. In a last-minute resolution though, the school board reduced the amount back to $2 million in favor of the county using that $6 million for a more substantial bond issuance. The move was designed to ensure the budget received support from the Hamilton County Commission, which is responsible for approving the district’s budget.
“I think all of us 100% agreed last year that maintenance needed to be increased,” Perez said. “I will honestly say my concern would be that we’re going to increase maintenance and then that’s the amount that we’re going to be told to cut the budget because that’s exactly how I perceived it, maybe misperceived, but that’s exactly how I perceived it last year.”
(READ MORE: Hamilton County Schools’ proposed budget includes raises)
As the budget currently stands, Robertson said there isn’t room to add to the capital maintenance funds without taking money from somewhere else. It could be possible to allocate some money in the district’s fund balance — funds typically used to offset shortfalls or meet unforeseen increases in expenses — to capital maintenance at the start of the school year, he added.
Hamilton County Schools has historically maintained at least one month of expenses in the fund balance because the last time it had to borrow money, the county charged the school system interest, board lawyer Scott Bennett said.
The budget was initially supposed to be voted on Thursday, but conversations with Hamilton County Mayor Weston Wamp and his office led Robertson to recommend pushing the school board’s vote to its June 20 meeting. A motion to add the budget back to the agenda failed.
Robertson will present the school district’s budget to the Hamilton County Commission on Wednesday. The county commission is expected to finalize the county’s fiscal year 2025 budget in late June. The county’s fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30.
Contact Shannon Coan at scoan@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6396.