School Board Reduces Budget by $39.2 Million
June 24, 2008 - The Wake County Board of Education yesterday identified $39.2 million in program and service reductions (PDF) necessary to balance its budget for the coming school year. The budget cuts were necessary to reconcile the school board's 2008-09 Plan for Student Success with the Wake County Board of Commissioners' appropriation for the Wake County Public School System.
The school board's proposed Plan for Student Success called for a $355,484,906 county appropriation in order to respond to growth and inflation, maintain existing services to students, and provide additional services to increase student performance and begin eliminating achievement gaps. "Board members spent three months together to create a Plan for Student Success addressing our students' needs," said Chief Business Officer David Neter. "Because the county appropriation did not fully fund the Plan, the school board studied our budget request by category for hours yesterday. Their work was methodical, efficient and deliberate."
Board members directed staff to bring the budget changes to their July 15 meeting for formal adoption, including:
- $24.3 million in reduced expansion items in the 2008-09 Plan for Student Success, including increased services for academically gifted students, elementary foreign language instruction, technology facilitators, and literacy coaches
- $7.5 million in base budget cuts, including class size and instructional supply adjustments and reduced spending in maintenance and operations, utilities and technology
- $3.3 million in salary adjustments aligned to changes in the state budget
- $4 million in revenue adjustments and reserves for student membership in case enrollment falls below projections
"The board had difficult choices to make," said Neter. "Education is a people-intensive business. When 82 percent of your total funding is invested in salaries and benefits, and 95 percent of your budget is directly school-based, you cannot make cuts without affecting people and schools.
"Reducing employee benefits has an indirect but real impact on students as we seek to retain and recruit quality teachers and staff. Reducing school and classroom resources has a direct impact. We need to do more to reduce achievement gaps, and we need to provide enough resources for system-level support. When facing a shortfall like this, there are no positive answers. The board tried to keep the focus away from employee benefits while mitigating the consequences to student learning."