Minutes 09-26-2024 - Business Meeting

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17 Commissioner Richards said the cliff started around 2022 and she is trying to understand when the recognition of the problem occurred. She said if the staffing number stayed the same from 2022-24, when did the plan for Tier 2 come together. Riza Jenkins said that initially the school board wanted to find savings that did not involve personnel and protect student facing positions. She said that they did not realize the amount of savings that they had hoped for with those changes. She said that at that point they decided to adjust their allotments for schools. She explained how the state allots funding and referred to slide #13. She said they are still having conversations about the instruction and programs that they offer, and the work is not done to stabilize the district. Commissioner Richards said that enrollment was down, and staffing was flat. She asked why expenditures were not adjusted at that time. Riza Jenkins said there will be more adjustments that have to be made. Vickie Feaster Fornville said they will have to work even harder to determine what positions will be eliminated in the future. Commissioner Fowler said the state is failing in its job to fund education. She asked where the eliminations were in central office positions. Nyah Hamlett said school staff and district wide positions. Commissioner Fowler asked if the district had a fund balance policy that stated that fund balance should only be spent on one-time expenditures. Chair Bedford said it is a county-policy that was adopted decades ago. Commissioner Fowler said she wants the school board to be aware of that when making decisions. Chair Bedford asked if the state had distributed the initial allotments for the year. Jonathan Scott said yes. Chair Bedford asked both school districts for the previous year's allotment charts. Riza Jenkins said they review the financial statements monthly. She said that they also must educate the public on allotments. Chair Bedford asked how far in advance they knew of the loss of$2.5 million. Jonathan Scott said that they realized the amount of the deficit at the end of quarter 2. He said that the fill rates were much higher than they have historically budgeted. He said there were also unexpected increases for utilities. Chair Bedford referred to a handout prepared by county staff explaining the history of county funding for the schools. Commissioner McKee said that the blame cannot be laid at the state. He asked if the county needs to be prepared for a mid-year budget request. George Griffin said they do not anticipate making a budget request. He said that the question is why they did not act sooner. He said that between the pandemic and now they have lost 8% of their student body but they were staffed as if they had not had a reduction. He said that each year in the last three years they could have done staff reductions, but it is hard to do that when there is a fund balance of $12 million dollars in fund balance. He said that if you see the projections, you see that in 2024 is where you cross the line into where the revenues no longer meet expenses. He said that it made sense to not carry funds while you are not hiring staff. He said that they cannot continue to spend more than they take in. Nyah Hamlett said that they do not anticipate adding another tier to the proposed cuts. She said that "more to come" means adjustments in allotment formulas and working with staff overtime. Commissioner McKee said that seems to be exactly what has them into this situation. Chair Bedford said the plan will rebuild fund balance in this coming year. Commissioner McKee said that he is not trying to be argumentative and that he remembers the conversation where the county discussed concern with the district on carrying too high of a fund balance. He said he has been concerned about this. He said that this is not an