The Catoosa County Board of Education will hold its first public budget hearing Thursday, July 11. The budget does not increase the millage rate for fiscal year 2019-20, but the district's 1,594 employees will benefit from $4.1 million being invested in system salaries.
The current millage rate, set by the board, is 17.151 per $1,000 of assessed property value. Blake Stansell, director of finance, said he expects the board will adjust the millage rate set by the county tax commissioner in July so that tax revenues remain neutral, which means no increase in property taxes. Stansell said the board last raised the millage rate in 2013.
The projected general fund budget is $112,845,284, which includes $2,377,439 that the system will pull from reserves to balance the budget. Stansell said the fund balance has doubled since 2010 and is projected to be $12,644,146 at the end of the fiscal year on June 30, 2020.
"Most of the state used fund reserves to balance their budgets coming out of the Great Recession," he said. "We budget conservatively. We under-budget on revenue and over-budget on expenditures. We went as long as we could before raising the millage rate in 2013."
Catoosa County schools have 825 certified employees who will receive the $3,000 pay raise passed into law by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in May, said Stansell. The raise will be built into the Georgia state salary scale. Stansell said the system will bear the cost for the federal taxes, Medicare and retirement system expenses.
Additionally, the system has 25 certified employees who are 100% locally funded. Those classified employees will receive a 4% raise.
The state of Georgia began reducing promised education funding in 2003 due to state revenue shortfalls. Catoosa County Public Schools lost $2 million in state revenue in 2003, and the "austerity" program reached its peak in 2010 when the system lost $10 million in revenue, Stansell said.
Statewide, more than $1 billion in promised money through the state education funding formula was not funded by the state in 2010, according to published reports. Cumulatively, Catoosa County lost nearly $70 million in state funding between 2003-2017, according to the school district.
The cuts in state funding led to property tax increases, teacher furloughs and shortened school years for students as districts struggled to offset the loss of funds. The trend began to decline in 2013, and 2018 was the first year the state has fully funded the state education formula.
Catoosa County has 17 schools and one online school and serves 10,488 students in grades K-12. The system is one of 45 charter school systems out of 181 school districts statewide. A charter system is a local school district that operates under a charter contract with the state and receives flexibility from certain state rules and regulations in exchange for greater accountability, according to the Georgia Department of Education website.
Such school systems receive more funding from the state than those that do not have a charter contract. Catoosa projects to receive $1,025,723 in charter school funds for fiscal 2019-20, according to the budget presentation. The county is one of the few charter systems that passes the money directly to the schools, where it's allocated by school leadership, said communications specialist Marissa Brower.
The board will hold its second public budget meeting on Aug. 6 before a final approval of the budget on Aug. 19. The board meeting begins with a public participation session at 6 p.m. prior to the regular meeting at 6:30 p.m. Meetings are held at 307 Cleveland St. in Ringgold.
Email Davis Lundy at davislundy@aol.com