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
What about your “modest” “savings” account.
Can we be looking at a major fat trimming move? Granted, that’s a pipe dream, but we CAN still dream.
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“Schools Looking for more County Money”
What else is new?
I met the late County Commissioner Carolyn Coleman many times. She seemed agreeable enough, but we never, ever, agreed on anything politically, except for one thing, and that didn’t take place in person.
At one County Commissioners’ Meeting she once said something that stuck with me, because I finally agreed with her.
She said “We never seem to come up with enough money for the schools”.
Ain’t that the truth.
There never is enough money for the schools.
I know where the county could find another 1.8 million for the schools.
Excellent, well thought out idea…too bad the maggots on the Board won’t even consider it.
No matter how much you “give” them, they always want more. Like a shiny new desk or fancy decorations would make any difference in the truth.
I hope the school suffers and gets no extra tax money to waste. Cut your excessive fat which taxpayers are aware of but the school system is blind too. The school system continues to toss money at the “problem” but year end testing continues to be dismal.
Yep, I also suggested that in a comment on the non-profit article.
It’s called feather bedding.
lets institute a max allowed # of ‘staff’ to teacher ?
It is kinda humorous that the County is telling the school Board to do what most of the taxpayers think the County should do. Revenue Neutral, trim the fat, cut the cost and save the tax payers some money.
The 10% extra I have to pay the county is more than the COLA I will receive this year.
Trim the fat and raise the level of Education, then we can talk. I’m tired of Schools always asking for more money and delivering less.
Way back when I worked you had to prove your worth just to keep your job!
Just ask uncle Todd. $5.3 million would only be .3% of $1.776 billion
. Gee I dunno, maybe “the schools” should work a bit harder and be less lazy.
They’re in the middle of a TEN WEEK vacation right now. Nice “work” if you can get it.
It’s interesting to me that Skip and the county commissioners were all well and ready to hit us tax payers with the higher tax on the revaluation of our properties to give these school system all the money they ask for!!! Now he says they have all these open positions that have not been filled for 6 to 12 months. He ask do you really need these positions filled??? This just points out to me that our school system superintendent and supervisors are extremely over their heads and don’t know anything about running a Billion dollar organization. We are in deep trouble as these people have only one thing to say is give me more money. It’s time to do some drastic measures and lay off 20 percent of all management positions and see if we can survive. We should tell the superintendent she will have a flat budget except for teacher and non managers raises of 4% a year for the next 3 years! End of comment!!!
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I understand that this is basically a Guilford County journal, but I have to bring this up.
A few months ago it hit the news that the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools system was financially unviable because they had spent MILLIONS of dollars over their budget. So they hired a new boss to stop the bleeding. I nearly commented last December when it was announced that the guy who was supposed to restore sensible finances was being paid an obscenely large amount!
Next development: Suddenly the system declares that it has eliminated its chronic deficit spending! But provides no details…. It was like magic.
Latest development: today the hero and savior – Don Phipps – announces that he is quitting, without even finishing his brief 15 month contract obligation! He only had to work until March next year. Suddenly he feels the need to get the Hell out of Dodge.
This stinks. There’s some kind of scandal here, obviously.
And this is the kind of crap that goes on in our wonderful government schools.
Maybe it’ll be feature in WGHP’s “What’s Right with Our Schools” – the Pollyanna puff pieces that are so syrupy they’re nauseating.
Isn’t this quite the conundrum for the schools. They constantly rail about being underpaid, then they get a larger raise than they thought..now they need more money…I bet they will still complain about being underpaid.
On a serious note, isn’t the money allocated in the state budget to cover the raises? If not, why would’nt they just say give the teachers a 50% raise and just make the counties pay for it. Doesn’t that money flow from the state to the county to cover the cost, otherwise, what’s the point? Also, for once, I have to agree with Skippy here. They have money given to them to cover their whole personnel including hundreds of chronic vacancies. Where has that money gone to? Presumably, unspent, right? LOL