The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools board voted unanimously for a slightly revised budget plan that Superintendent Crystal Hill presented at a special meeting Tuesday.
The plan includes all the main features of the budget presented three weeks ago, including raises for teachers and hourly staff, new laptops for students to take home and a stepped-up plan for building maintenance. And the request for county money is still big enough that commissioners may face a choice between raising property taxes or giving CMS less than the full amount.
But Hill made some adjustments to her initial plan, the biggest being a shift from buying new laptops and tablets for students to leasing them. She proposed asking for $8 million to buy about 18,000 devices; now the district wants $4 million to lease twice as many.
“We’ll be able to get more devices and we’ll be on a refresh, versus less devices and having to figure out what to do with them when they’re end-of-life,” she said.
The budget approved by the school board seeks $643 million from the county for 2024-25, an increase of $46.4 million over the current year. Here are some of the highlights:
Employee raises
CMS wants $7.4 million in county money to increase the local supplement for teachers by an average of 5%, from $10,287 to $10,801. That’s money added to the state’s base pay, and the amount for any given teacher varies based on experience.
The district will request an additional $13.8 million to raise wages for hourly staff, including bus drivers, cafeteria staff, teacher assistants, office staff and people who staff after-school programs. That includes money to boost the lowest-paid hourly workers from $15.60 to $20 an hour, with higher-paid staff getting raises as well.
When Hill presented her first budget plan, it assumed that county-paid staff would get 3% cost-of-living raises to match what’s in the current state budget. The budget presented Tuesday moves that up to 4.5%, based on predictions that the General Assembly will approve bigger raises in the 2024 short session that began last week.
“We believe 4.5% is probably closer to where we will end in this budget cycle,” Chief Financial Officer Kelly Kluttz told the board. “Certainly we do not know that for sure, but we do believe that that is a better projection than where we were before.”
That increase requires an additional $3.4 million, offsetting most of the cut from the laptop-lease switch.
Technology
The laptop leases, if approved, will provide about 36,000 new devices. That’s only a first installment toward about 151,000 needed to update the take-home devices for all students and teachers.
Most teachers and students already have take-home devices, but Chief Financial Officer Kelly Kluttz says many were bought with federal money during the pandemic and are becoming outdated. CMS officials expect the full replacement cycle to take four years, which will mean more money in the coming budget years as well.
The 2024-25 budget also includes an additional $2.5 million in county money to pick up the costs for cyber-security that the state has been paying for with federal COVID-19 relief money. As that money runs out, CMS has to find a new way to cover that tab.
Growth and inflation
CMS will open two new schools — Ballantyne Ridge High and Knights View Elementary — in south Charlotte in August. The request for county money includes $1.8 million for maintenance staff and administrative support for those schools.
CMS is projecting it will grow by about 300 students in 2024-25 — relatively flat for a district with more than 141,000 enrolled. For the last several years, most of the enrollment growth in Mecklenburg County and across the state has been in charter schools. School districts must pass along a per-pupil share of county money for each resident enrolled in charter schools. CMS expects that to be around $95 million next year, an increase of $4 million.
Some of the increased request for county money will simply cover rising costs, including an additional $2.7 million for utilities.
Building maintenance
The county traditionally provides CMS $23 million a year for building maintenance and replacement of outdated systems. That’s in a capital budget that’s separate from operating money — and separate from new schools and other major projects undertaken when school bonds are approved.
In her first proposal Hill sought an additional $19 million to replace such things as roofs and HVAC systems at 30 aging facilities, most of them schools. That would be in addition to the 30 projects covered by the record $2.5 billion in school bonds approved in November.
The new play reduces that request to $10 million, which would be coupled with $11.7 million in savings from 2017 bond projects. Hill says County Manager Dena Diorio has agreed to let CMS use that money for efforts to keep the district’s 184 schools from falling into disrepair.
Board member Liz Monterrey said that savings is “monumental,” and member Lisa Cline says the money can be put to good use.
“Many of our facilities need additional help, and there’s a long list that they’ve been working on,” Cline said. “Hopefully that can go to helping air-conditioning and HVAC and paving and digital signs.”
Big numbers, next steps
The county operating request approved Tuesday is down about $600,000 from the initial plan, for a total operating increase of $46.4 million. Last year CMS sought a $40 million increase in operating money and received the full amount.
CMS is the largest single item in the county budget, which also covers Central Piedmont Community College, parks, libraries, jails, social services and other county departments. County officials have consistently said education is a top priority.
But the request for a combined increase of more than $56 million in operating and capital funds could put commissioners in a bind. At a joint meeting in February, Diorio said money is expected to be tighter than usual this year. She estimated the county would have only about $36 million in additional money from growth, which could require tax hikes if the total county budget grows by more than that.
CMS officials will present the district’s request to county commissioners on May 8, and Diorio will present her budget proposal on May 16. Commissioners are expected to vote on June 4.
