Superintendent seeks $15.5 million more in budget
Morgan was swamped last night so she didn't get to a couple of items on the board's agenda in today's story.
So we've got a couple of items lined up in Thursday's paper, including a look at the superintenden'ts proposed 2007-08 budget. This is a draft proposal and we've already been told that some numbers could change. In fact, some changed from Tuesday night to Wednesday afternoon when we got this version.
In a nutshell, GCS Superintendent Terry Grier crafted a budget around $602.9 million in local, state and federal funds.
Of that, $172.1 million is what he is seeking from the county. That represents a 9.88 percent increase or $15.5 million more than in this year's budget. (School districts have little say over what they get from the state and federal governments. But school officials can affect the local budget by persuading county commissioners to cough up more from their coffers.)
Read tomorrow's paper for a synopsis and some breakouts on what's in the budget. Or, read all 59 pages at the above link.
Comments (2)
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Your story about the Guilford County budget increase left out an important fact. It did not relate the budget to a cost per student. Do we even know the student population in the county?
The cost per student at private schools in Guilford can be as low as $2750/student. How does that compare with public schools?
Posted on April 12, 2007 11:14 AM
Harold,
I don't have the breakdown, but if you take the total budget and divide it by the estimated enrollment you'd get an idea of about how much is spent per child. I don't think it would be exact but it should be pretty close.
They're estimating an additional 1,833 students, which would put them at about 72,200 next year.
So that would be about $8,438 per student. Sorry, I don't have any updated figures or estimates for any of the other districts for comparison.
But in 2004-05, the latest year of data posted on the state's Web site, Guilford was at $7,534, Forsyth at $7,512, Charlotte at $7,521 and Wake at $7,240. This is money spent per student from all sources of funding. (Check out that report here. Click on Finances then 'per pupil and current expenditures,' then scroll at top to fiscal year 2005.)
Posted on April 12, 2007 12:04 PM