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available are too few and forced to service too many facilities. She encouraged the Board to fund the full school budget because it will make a difference. Judy Jones, biology teacher at Chapel Hill High School, encouraged full funding of the Chapel Hill/Carrboro City Schools budget. She encouraged the Board to fully fund the Chapel Hill/Carrboro School District budget, and thanked the Board for almost complete funding. For less than $1 million, the Board would meet full funding. So much energy has been spent prioritizing, eliminating, adding, and trimming the budget request, that full funding would honor that hard work and effort. This budget will improve the level of performance of the students, while attracting and retaining quality teachers, as well as meeting the needs of limited English proficient and special needs students. Other neighboring counties and states offer higher wages and succeed in attracting teachers to their districts. Ms. Jones reiterated that had the school system lost Neeli Lambert to a higher paying school district, it truly would have been a terrible loss based on her excellent reputation with parents, students, and colleagues. Last year, another quality, diversified, experienced teacher was lost by leaving to work at Durham Academy at a $10,000.00 annual increase, even though he would have preferred to continue working within the Chapel Hill/Carrboro School District. Valuable resources are being lost in experienced, caring, qualified, excellent teachers who are only seeking a better way of life with a higher salary. East Chapel Hill High School has seen three (3) technology specialists within its three (3) years of operation. These employees did not leave out of a dislike for their employment, but for purely financial reasons. Ms. Jones stated her commitment to the incorporation of technology into the teaching process and she strongly urges the Board to honor the hard work put into the Chapel Hill/Carrboro School District budget request by fully funding their budget. Faith Becker stated she supports fully funding the Chapel Hill/Carrboro School District's proposed budget. She feels the most critical item is to lift the existing cap on supplements for veteran teachers. Ms. Becker is a native Chapel Hillian and a product of its school district. While she now teaches in Chapel Hill, she garnered her experience while working in surrounding area systems for 18 years. Her move to the Chapel Hill/Carrboro School District has been marred by the supplement cap. Although having taught school for 20 years, Chapel Hill/Carrboro School District has capped her supplement to ten (10) years. In essence, the system is ignoring ten (10) years of her experience. There are 112 experienced employees who share in this predicament. A colleague of Ms. Becker has been teaching for 24 years and now works with psychiatrically referred children, a hard-to-fill position. Her supplement was also capped at ten (10) years, causing her to work beside fellow employees, while making significantly less money, despite her level of experience. Ms. Becker requested equal pay for equal work and to remove the supplement caps for veteran teachers. Peter Morcombe is the parent of children who attend or will attend schools in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro district. For years, Mr. Morcombe attended public hearings to protest what he considered wasteful spending by this same school district. The services and administrative sections of the budget were growing at a much greater rate than the classroom expenditure portion. Recently, Mr. Morcombe has seen the priorities shift to the hiring and retention of high-quality teachers, reduction in class sizes, and thereby relieving stress on those teachers who can now offer more personalized instruction to our children. As a taxpayer, he is pleased with the progress in prioritizing expenses moreso than he was five (5) years ago. These are good economic times and he supports the idea of an increase in funding for our schools. However, he also agrees with Commissioner Gordon's request that the school budgeting process be improved. This year's budget requests saw a 24 percent increase in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro School District and an 18 percent increase in the remainder of Orange County. If these trends continued over the next few years, soon there will be inadequate funding for other vital services, such as police and fire. Mr. Morcombe suggests using these abundant years to prepare for the lean years yet to come. At present, most of the funds in the school districts' requests are in the form of continuation budgets, which remain untouchable. The Commissioners are left to review only the expansion and supplementary budget elements. Mr. Morcombe proposes that the County fully fund the proposed school districts' budgets on the condition that next year there will be no continuation budget. In future years, all school spending should be subject to review by the Commissioners. He believes this is an offer the school districts cannot refuse, for to do so could be seen as denying accountability. Mr. Morcombe declared his vested interest in that he is a member of an organization that has created five (5) charter schools. There are five (5) principals and 55 teachers to serve over 600 students in grades K through 12. He would like his employees to receive the appropriate pay raises they