Agenda - 05-19-2009 - 7b - Laserfiche WebLink

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•xr�. i• I 11LL OKO e CITY SCHo0LS To: Laura Blackmon Orange County'Manager BRC7N1: Neill?edersen Superintends RE: Submission of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools 2009-10 operating Budget Request DATE: April 8, 2009 On April 3, 2009 the Board of:education approved its 2009-10 budget request for submission to the orange County Board of Commissioners. our Board of :education is well aware of the financial challenges facing the County Commissioners this year and has submitted a budget request that is responsive to them. The Board is requesting that you provide the same county appropriation as you did last year which, actually, is less on a per--pupil basis. In our budget request we planned on a one percent increase in the district's tax base ($186,000). We understood that the actual rate would be decreased so that the new rate would tax properties at the same rate as the current tax rate. We are requesting that the district tax rate be set at a level that would generate at least as much as we would have received from the current level of taxation, taking into account the increase in the tax base. In order to create a budget based upon these revenue assumptions, we have had to reduce our current expenses by $718,280 because of some anticipated uncontrollable increases in expenses. Five areas were identified for reductions: $250,000 in a 10 percent central office non-personnel allocation; $144,000 in a 10 percent school non-personnel allocation; $200,000 in a five percent central office salary line reduction; $10 1,188 in reducing K--3 teacher assistant contracts by five days; and $74,340 in the elimination of the driver/clerical positions in middle schools. We are aware that the County Commissioners have expressed their intent fo reduce the proportion of funding that the two school systems receive from 48.4 to 48.1 percent of the total county budget. This will require our district to reduce its local budget by at least another $2.3 million. If we receive the same amount of revenue from the special district tax as we did last year, we must then reduce our budget request by another $186,000. At the same tine, we are faced with a major reduction in state funding. We ask that the County Commissioners do all that they can to provide more to schools than the target of 48.1 percent.