BOE tentatively OKs budget with only $2,500 state teacher raise, 4.1% for non-teacher staff

Board members, superintendent found cost of previously discussed 7% raise 'unsustainable'

Bulloch County BOE Chair Elizabeth Williams, right, seen with Superintendent Charles Wilson in this photo from an earlier meeting, says the Board of Education and staff had to steer away from the initial budget suggestion of a 7% raise for all employees because the cost would have been unsustainable in future years. (AL HACKLE/file photo)

BOE Wilson, Williams — Bulloch County BOE Chair Elizabeth Williams, right, seen with Superintendent Charles Wilson in this photo from an earlier meeting, says the Board of Education and staff had to steer away from the initial budget suggestion of a 7% raise for all employees because the cost would have been unsustainable in future years. (AL HACKLE/file photo)

Last week the Bulloch County Board of Education tentatively approved a fiscal year 2025 budget with general fund spending reduced $5.23 million from the earliest April version. For pay enhancements, this budget includes only the state-funded $2,500 raise for teachers and a locally funded 4.1% raise in base pay for school employees without teaching certificates.

Superintendent Charles Wilson's initial April suggestion of a 7% raise for all school system employees was abandoned for a projected savings of more than $2.4 million, including $1,845,425 in salaries and $558,726 in benefits costs. Additionally, a $2 million purchase and refresh of Chromebooks laptop computers was shifted out of the general fund to instead be paid for from the Education-Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax.

Those changes alone reduced the proposed general fund spending by $4.5 million, from the over $159.5 million suggested in April to slightly under $154.27 million in the June 6 tentatively adopted budget. With general fund revenue of $149.1 million now predicted, that budget will still require spending nearly $5.17 million from the accumulated fund balance.

The school system built up a year-end balance, or reserve, of about $59 million during the COVID-19 pandemic years by shifting some expenses to a special fund supplied by federal school recovery grants. All along, Wilson and staff proposed a five-year approach to spend the balance back down to a more normal reserve equal to 15-25% of annual spending. But with the larger suggested raises, this year's spending proposal as initially presented April 25 could have eaten up more than $10 million of the balance in a single year.

"We had to take that out. We could not sustain that," Board of Education Chair Elizabeth Williams said last week when asked what had become of the 7% raise. "I mean, we could do it now, but then we're not able to sustain that; it would cause our fund balance to continue to just spiral downward."

Pay raises carry continuing year-after-year costs, and some board members had expressed concerns, beginning in April, about the effect a 7% raise would have on the reserve. With this being an election year for half of the eight board seats, candidates not yet on the board also criticized the proposed level of spending.

The trimmed version of the budget with the 4.1% raise in base pay for support personnel – such as paraprofessionals, custodians and bus drivers – and just the $2,500 state funded raise for teachers and other faculty with educator certification, was included in the budget "review" presentation at a May 30 board work session.

Reduced about 3% in general fund spending from the initial proposal, this revised budget was put up for tentative adoption during the June 6 regular meeting. It was tentatively adopted 6-0, with two of the board members absent. Now the board may vote during its 6:30 p.m. June 27 meeting for final adoption before the fiscal year begins July 1.

'Couldn't sustain it'

No further discussion accompanied Thursday's vote. But Williams, the retired principal and teacher elected to the board from District 2 in 2022 and chosen this year's chair by vote of the board members in January, and District 4 member Donna Clifton, also a retired principal elected to the board in 2022, were interviewed briefly after the meeting.

Clifton had said she wanted to do more for teachers and other school employees, but she had also been one of the first, in April's discussion, to express doubts about the cost.

"Oh, we'd love to do more," Clifton said last week. "Our teachers deserve to make more. That's a lot of work, to be a teacher. … Teachers deserve good pay. We're not able to give them the pay they deserve because we can't sustain it."

For that matter, Wilson on April 25 had described the suggestion of a 7% across-the-board raise as a conversation starter – especially in the context of Bulloch County Schools having to compete with other districts for teachers. "After all of this is said and done with, we might have to drop back to some other options," he said then.

BOE in transition

The board member who made the motion for tentative budget approval during the June 6 meeting, District 3's Stuart Tedders, and the one who seconded, District 1's Glenn Womack, have terms ending Dec. 31 and did not seek re-election. Their successors were elected May 21.

The two members absent were District 8's Maurice Hill, who was re-elected without opposition, and District 7's Heather Mims. Now completing her eighth year on the board, Mims narrowly lost her re-election bid May 21 to retired teacher Lisha Nevil. Nevil was one of several citizens who spoke during public comments time during last Thursday's meeting to express concern about the school district's increasing expenditures. One speaker also demanded a school property tax exemption for senior citizens.

In addition to the general fund, the board has budgets for special revenue, school nutrition, capital projects and debt service, all together totaling $189.9 million projected revenue and $184.3 expected spending.