$2.2M Added to Schools Budget
By Diette Courrege, The Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C.
Jun. 26–The Charleston County School Board tacked on $2.2 million of last-minute expenses Monday to get the votes needed to pass the combined $378.8 million operating and debt service budgets.
The budget passed in a 6-2 vote with board members David Engelman and Ray Toler voting against it. Board member Brian Moody was not at the meeting.
The extra $2.2 million approved wasn’t included in the first reading of the district’s budget. Part of the increase will go to two schools, Memminger Elementary on the peninsula and North Charleston Elementary. Each will get $237,000 more next year to provide the same staff as Buist Academy, an excellent-rated magnet school downtown. The money will pay for an assistant principal, guidance counselor, nurse and full-time physical education, art, Latin and Spanish teachers for each school.
School Superintendent Nancy McGinley emphasized that she wants those allocations to be part of a broader effort to give every district school in future budgets what they need to be high- performing.
The money also will pay for the third year of a salary study’s recommended increases for teachers and administrators to bring their pay to market average. Classified employees already received the full recommended increase while the district spread those over a few years for teachers and administrators.
The pay increase for teachers will cost $1.4 million and $350,000 for administrators. Administrators won’t see the extra money, however, until the district approves more accountability measures for them. The board had the same stipulation last year before distributing the increases, but former school Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson never brought a recommendation to the board, so administrators didn’t receive the money.
Board Vice Chairman and North Charleston resident Hillery Douglas also lobbied the board to include, which it did, a requirement to make plans this year to start a Montessori program at Malcolm Hursey Elementary in North Charleston in the 2008-09 school year.
A fourth add-on that didn’t cost any money was requiring school officials to come up with a new way of dividing money among schools next year. The district uses a point allocation system that takes into account a school’s enrollment and grades served. The district will create a weighted student funding formula based on the needs of the children and programs at each school.
Board member Gregg Meyers called the current system for allocating money “Byzantine” and said the change will revolutionize the way schools are funded.
The motion to approve the budget also included the requirement that, like last year, the district identify its least-effective expenditures equal to at least 10 percent of the operating budget and recommend ways to improve the effectiveness of that spending.
The inclusion of the Memminger and the weighted student formula proposals was enough to get the vote of even conservative school board member Arthur Ravenel Jr., who spent the better part of the meeting asking the district to change the budget so it wouldn’t increase taxes.
Toler said he voted against the budget because of the salary study’s effect on the wages of classified employees, such as maintenance workers. The district found the new scale had problems and the board still hasn’t addressed those.
Engelman said he voted against the budget because the district has shown no improvement, and he wants to see a return on its investments.
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