All Bulloch County Schools employees, from teachers and principals to cooks and bus drivers, will get a 3 percent, one-time bonus next school year.

It's the Board of Education's solution to how to use most of a $1.7 million increase in state funding without committing the school system to a continuing raise.

The bonus, which school system Chief Financial Officer Troy Brown and Superintendent Charles Wilson called a "stipend," was approved unanimously during Thursday's board meeting.

In a way, the salary boost goes back to a speech Gov. Nathan Deal gave in January, when he proposed a $300 million increase in the state's funding to elementary, middle and high schools. The funding, Deal said, would be more than enough to provide a 3 percent raise for teachers. But the Legislature approved the funding increase without changing the teacher salary scale.

Instead, Georgia's fiscal year 2017 appropriations bill states that the $300 million will offset previous austerity reductions and "provide local education authorities the flexibility to eliminate teacher furlough days, increase instructional days, and increase teacher salaries."

But as Wilson and Brown previously noted, the Bulloch County Schools already returned to the full 180 days of classes in the school year that just ended. They had eliminated unpaid furlough days two years earlier.

Also, in the fiscal year that ends June 30, the Board of Education had given employees who don't have teaching certificates a 5 percent raise in their base pay and refreshed a long-frozen local supplement to certified educators' salaries. This amounted to roughly a 1.5 percent net raise for teachers.

Three options

Initially, Brown and Wilson "parked" the added state funding in the proposed 2016-17 Bulloch County Schools budget without assigning it a use. Thursday, Brown presented three options for the board.

Option 1 was to "do nothing" with the $1.7 million, as Brown phrased it in his slide presentation. But this would have reduced the amount by which spending is exceeding annual revenue.

Option 2 was to raise the local supplement pay of teachers and other certified educators by 3.5 percent. The idea was to even up the percentage increase, over two years, with the 5 percent base raise given support personnel last year. The projected cost this year was $1.4 million, but as happens with raises, this would become a recurring cost in future budgets.

"It's not a one-time," Brown told board members. "We're imbedding it in the overall budget, so it's going to be there next year ... and the following and the following."

Option 3 was to provide all employees a 3 percent, one-time pay boost. The estimated cost was $1.5 million.

"That is a one-time cost," Brown said. "That is not something that would be part of our ongoing budget."

Initially, his suggestion was to exclude bus drivers from this bonus, since the state has changed their salary scale with a 3 percent raise for the coming year.

Board members indicated that they were interested in a one-time option.

"There's no assurance that every year this (state) money would be available?" asked District 2 member Mike Sparks.

"No, sir," Brown said.

"Well, that's what I needed to know," Sparks said.

District 3 board member Dr. LeVon Wilson, who participated by telephone, said he would rule out Option 1. He asked Brown and Superintendent Charles Wilson which of the other two options would have a better effect on employee morale and less impact on the school system's finances.

Brown expressed concern about the effect of giving a raise only to teachers and others with teaching certificates.

"Yes, we did give a 5 percent to the noncertified last year ... but in a year's time, you forget what you got, and if somebody else this year is getting something, and you're getting nothing, I would hate for there to be a dissension among the troops, because we would like for this type of thing to be a morale booster," he said.

District 4 board member Steve Hein asked how much adding bus drivers to the one-time 3 percent stipend would cost. After Brown calculated it about $33,000, Hein and other board members said this was small in comparison to the $1.5 million overall costs and asked that bus drivers be included.

Option 3, it is

This became the superintendent's recommendation to the board. Even teachers on his Teacher Advisory Committee had said they preferred Option 3 when he informally asked them, Wilson said.

"I worry about us being able to compete in terms of the pay of teachers in the surrounding counties based on what I know and see," he said. "However, if we're going to go for the morale booster that's not going to cost us down the road, Option 3 does make the most sense."

Sparks made the motion, and Hein seconded it.

Brown said the plan was for the stipend to be issued in a separate check issued before Christmas, with the amount to be prorated for any employees who leave the system during the year.

The cost was included in the proposed budget, yet to be adopted, for fiscal year 2017, which opens July 1. Brown and Wilson have not suggested any tax increase this year.

Shrinking reserve

Instead, the proposed budget, like the one for the fiscal year now ending, involves annual deficit spending in which the school system is shrinking a previously accumulated cash reserve. After starting this fiscal year with a $19 million balance in its general fund, the school system, Brown projects, will reduce that balance to $16.4 million by this June 30.

With spending projected to exceed revenue by almost $4.1 million in the budget now under discussion, that fund balance will be further depleted to $12.3 million by June 30, 2017, Brown projected. That, however, will be just under the 15 percent reserve that the state prescribes as a long-term maximum. The school system's fiscal 2017 general fund spending is projected to top $86.3 million.

Herald reporter Al Hackle may be reached at (912) 489-9458.