Just weeks after the Guilford County Board of Commissioners approved a 5.9-cent property tax increase and adopted the county’s new budget, Guilford County Schools is coming back to the commissioners asking for another $5.3 million.
The request comes after commissioners rejected most of the nearly $19 million in additional operating funding the school system sought during the county budget process.
The commissioners approved $288.1 million in county operating funding for Guilford County Schools, an increase of roughly $5.6 million over the previous year. However, that was about $13 million less than school officials requested.
The school system now says it needs an additional $5.3 million because the recently approved state budget included larger employee raises than school officials anticipated when they prepared their original budget request.
The state budget provides an average teacher raise of about 8 percent and a 3 percent raise for non-licensed school employees.
Both the county and the school system had originally budgeted based on the assumption that the state would provide raises averaging about 3 percent. Guilford County Schools Chief Financial Officer Tyler Beck said that the school system had set aside a little less than $8 million for the raises – but the raises approved by the state are expected to cost about $13 million.
That left the school system with a projected $5.3 million gap.
The Guilford County Board of Education voted in July to formally request that the county commissioners provide the additional money.
Beck acknowledged that the county has already adopted its budget and set the property tax rate for the fiscal year, making it unlikely the commissioners could provide the full amount without taking money from another source.
He said the request was intended in part to make the cost of the state-mandated raises clear rather than to demand that the county immediately provide the entire $5.3 million.
Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston told the Rhino Times this week that the commissioners aren’t prepared to hand over more taxpayer money without receiving detailed information showing why it’s needed and why the school system can’t find the money within its existing budget.
Alston said that county staff has sent school officials a series of questions before a planned meeting between the two boards.
“I asked for a meeting,” Alston said. “I thought it was going to be within two weeks, but they said they needed more time in order to gather the information that we requested so they could be prepared to justify and show why they need the $5.3 million.”
No date has been set yet for the meeting, but it now appears likely to be held later in August.
Alston said one of the primary questions from the county concerns the large number of vacant positions included in the school system’s budget.
He also said the commissioners want to know how long those positions have been vacant, how much money has accumulated from the vacancies and whether all of the positions are still needed.
“They’ve got hundreds of job vacancies that have been carried on their books,” Alston said. “That’s millions of dollars that they’ve got there.”
Alston said a vacant position doesn’t necessarily mean that position won’t eventually be filled – but he said positions that have remained vacant for six months or a year deserve additional scrutiny.
He said the commissioners have also asked school officials to examine other potential savings within the school system’s more than $1 billion budget.
According to Alston, finding $5.3 million would require the school system to reduce its overall budget by about one-half of 1 percent.
“Have they looked at their vacancy rates?” Alston asked. “Have they looked at any other way that they might be able to save? You’re talking about one-half of 1 percent out of their budget.”
The commissioners faced intense pressure from the school system to approve a larger tax increase during the county budget process.
School officials warned that the amount of funding approved by the county could lead to layoffs and criticized commissioners for providing raises to county employees without giving the school system enough money to provide comparable raises for school employees.
The commissioners ultimately increased the county property tax rate from 73.05 cents to 78.95 cents for each $100 of assessed property value.
Alston said the board deliberately held the increase to 5.9 cents because commissioners didn’t want to cross the 6-cent mark.
School officials had proposed that the commissioners increase the tax rate by another 1.54 cents to provide the additional money they were requesting.
“We said no,” Alston said. “You need to look at some of your cuts and see what you might have in order to try to get another $13 million, but we’re not going to go up on our tax rate anymore.”
The county’s ability to provide more money was also thrown off track by state legislation that prevented Guilford County from using its 2026 property revaluation for the current budget year.
Before that legislation passed, county officials had expected the higher property values to generate enough revenue to provide the school system with substantially more money while lowering the property tax rate. Instead, the commissioners had to continue using the county’s older property values and raise the tax rate by nearly 6 cents.
Alston said the county also cut about $83 million from its proposed budget and required county departments to absorb millions of dollars in additional reductions.
He added that finding another $5.3 million after the budget has been adopted would likely require Guilford County to take money from its fund balance, which has already fallen below the safe level county officials would prefer to maintain.
“We don’t have the funds in order to give out,” Alston said.
Alston said the schools need to demonstrate that they have exhausted the available savings in their own budget before asking commissioners to take more money from county reserves or impose another burden on taxpayers.
“If you need it, you’ve got to be able to justify and show why you need it,” Alston said, “not only to the county commissioners, but also to the citizens
