Agenda - 04-27-2010 - Attachment 1

Browse Search

A-~}~~n~~~ ~ TO: Orange County Board of Commissioners FROM: Neil G. Pedersen Superintendent RE: CHCCS Board of Education's Budget Request DATE: Apri120, 2010 We look forward to sharing the Board of Education's Budget Request for 2010-11 with the Board of County Commissioners on Apri127~'. In recent years it has become increasingly challenging to prepare a budget request due to the downturn and uncertainties in the economy. The Board of Education is acutely aware of the financial constraints under which the Commissioners are working, and for the last two years has submitted requests that are sensitive to the scarcity of resources. For the 2010-11 school year, we are asking, basically, for the anticipated increase in fixed costs and the replacement of some lost federal grant funding. We also are requesting that the Commissioners fund the additional 94 students that we are projected to receive over our 2009- • 10 budget projection. The bottom line is a request for an increase in the per-pupil appropriation of $62 or a 2% increase in per-pupil expenditures. This per-pupil appropriation would still be less than the appropriation that we received two years ago in 2008-09. The Superintendent already has identified $316,914 in central office savings, which will allow us to fund an Instructional Resource Teacher (IRT) position in each of our three comprehensive high schools. Improvement in student achievement at the high school level has been minimal in recent years, and we believe that these IRT positions are necessary to provide the required attention to the instructional programs in our comprehensive high schools. If the County were to provide us with the same amount of funding based on the county per-pupil appropriation as we received last year, we would need to identify another $1,023,864 in reductions. The second year of the state's biennium has two major reductions for K-12 education: an increase in the discretionary reduction and the elimination of any funding for textbooks. We will need to identify how to reduce $666,183 from our state budget, and it is assumed that we won't replace any textbooks. In addition, the Governor has asked state agencies to develop 3, 5, and 7 percent budget reduction scenarios. A 3 percent reduction in state funding for our district translates into a $1,680,000 reduction. In the Governor's budget released today, we learned that the overall reduction for K- 12 education is about 4 percent (including the reductions already included in the approved budget for the second year of the biennium.). If the County were to hold our per-pupil appropriation funding at last year's level and the state were to institute a 4 percent reduction in funding for • schools, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools would have to identify approximately $3.3 million of reductions.