Never in the history of Guilford County government has the difference been greater between the Guilford County Schools’ funding request and the amount of money recommended for the schools in the county manager’s budget proposal than it is this year.
For operations, the schools requested $101 million more than the system got last year and Guilford County Manager Mike Halford recommended that the schools get a zero dollar increase.
The proposed budget recommends $245 million for school operations, which is the same amount the county gave the schools for that purpose in the budget adopted last June.
However, as they say, it’s not over until it’s over, and, when it comes to county budgets, it’s not over until the Guilford County Board of Commissioners says it is.
What’s going on right now with school funding is likely a budget negotiation version of the good cop/bad cop ploy – where Halford is the bad cop and he is setting the scene for Chairman of the Board of Commissioners Skip Alston (along with the board) to be the good cop who comes in and makes things better by offering the schools additional money.
Since Halford proposed no increase for school operations, any increase by the board will be welcome.
Hours after Halford proposed his budget, Alston told the Rhino Times that the school system will get some additional money for operations this year in the commissioners’ budget.
“But it won’t be $101 million more,” Alston said.
In fact, it’s not even likely to be close to the request. But there will be some additional money for salaries, paying the utility bills and other things that go into running the school system with over 125 schools.
Alston said the manager’s recommendations are just that – recommendations – and now the Board of Commissioners makes the call.
The commissioners were truly stunned earlier in the year by the giant increase in funding the schools requested. Raising that money would have amounted to a 14-cent tax increase in a year when Alston has publicly stated that he wouldn’t support any tax increase at all.
Even Commissioner Pat Tillman, who was serving on the Guilford County Board of Education at this time last year, said he did a double take when he saw the schools’ ask.
“When they sent that $100 million request, I was like, ‘come on,’” Tillman said. “It’s like Gov. Jim Martin used to say – ‘You can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want.’”
It will be interesting to see how much additional money the Board of Commissioners ends up giving the schools in June.
Funny how they don’t want the school system to get any money although we haven’t had a raise in years. But they voted themselves a raise a couple of years ago. The board salary is over $39,000 a year for 2 days of meetings a month. The starting salary for schools maintenance is $31,600 for 12 months . And maintenance staff are considered essential therefore working when in inclement weather.
You can bet Skip and company will provide more money. They will lose alot of votes if they don’t.
In the end, whatever you give them will never be enough. They want more every year.
Money does not make better schools. Never has. What we have now are not public schools, they are govt schools.
Fill those eager heads with propaganda.
Return the schools’ mandate to educating students in reading at grade level, basic math that is needed to function in life, common English so people can understand each other without the need for translation, history so students can understand the human experience, and science to prepare students for the future. Use of computers to enhance learning not as a substitute for learning from one human to another.
Stop spending money on critical race theory. Stop spending money on gender issues. In years past there was a subject called “Health” that was introduced in the curriculum at the appropriate time. Ask the questions, will critical race theory help the student find a job after graduation or will learning the definition of gender fluid enhance the students’ success in life?
Stop out of proportion spending on administration. Add sincere and effective discipline in the schools by not tolerating bad behavior. Remove phones from the schools and thereby removing the responsibility of phone monitoring from teachers. Short of removing phones, a means of disabling student phones during school hours.
Reward good teachers with better pay with money taken from the unnecessary spending on administration.
Bingo!!!
Thirty nine thousand dollars a year is ridiculous for 24 days work. I never knew the school board was paid this well. This also makes me wonder where is all the money from the education lottery. The big selling idea for the lottery was how much money was going to go to the schools and we’re not seeing any relief from requesting taxpayer money.
Spot on. I have never understood the financials of the lottery, especially since Bev Purdue found a loop hole to place money in the general state fund.