With capital growth at Piedmont City Schools continuing through this year, Piedmont City Schools is forecasting a $9.4 million budget for this year.Last year’s budget was around $8.5 million.
The budget was presented to the Piedmont City Schools Board of Education at its meeting on Aug. 12. The board held a public meeting at the high school library to present the budget, but no one from the public attended.
Superintendent Matt Akin detailed the multi-million-dollar budget for Board members, reviewing the current number of teachers and staff members employed, expected enrollment numbers, funding totals from local, state and federal sources and the system’s total expenditures.
Akin said the Career Tech Center’s construction accounted for the $853,450 increase in this year’s budget.
Of the total budget, 69 percent accounts for the salaries of teachers, aides and other staff members such as lunchroom employees and secretaries. That $6.5 million is up $40,187 from last year’s total for instructional and instructional support services expenditures. The increase comes from the hiring of an additional teacher for the Career Tech Center.
Piedmont School System Chief Financial Officer Alicia Gilley said the system is actually saving more money this year in its instructional and support services expenditures because of a decrease in the amount it is having to pay for employees’ health benefits.
Gilley said the system will be paying $9,024 per individual versus the $9,300 it was paying last year.
Akin said Piedmont City Schools expects the same amount of students that were enrolled last year, a number that normally does not remain constant from year to year. Because of a graduating class of 79 and incoming kindergarten class of 80, the balance of 1024 students is expected to remain the same.
That explanation might be comforting to some who were concerned the city schools might lose students after the closing of Springs Global Inc. in April forced some families to have to seek employment out of town.
“This is the first year I’ve seen enrollment stay the same as the previous year,” Akin said. “It’s definitely not because we’ve lost any number of students. It just happened to be that way this time.”
Akin said he is confident the budget will withstand the possibility of proration in the spring due to lagging tax revenues for the state. To prepare for proration, Akin said a number of expenditures were shifted from state funds to federal funds, which will protect the system from the state funding cuts that may come in the future.
Akin said the system was also “conservative” in its hiring of new teachers and staff members this year, only hiring one new teacher and filling one vacant teaching position.
Some systems, like Anniston City Schools, have struggled in the past year with increasing operating expenses and decreases in state funding to put aside the state-mandated one-month’s operating expenses for its system.
But Piedmont City Schools has maintained that savings goal throughout the past year, with around $700,000 in the bank for its one-month operating expenses. And Akin said the pad is expected to increase by four percent in this budget because of an increase in retirement contributions for the system’s current employees.
The system previously contributed 11.75 percent of an employee’s total salary, but this year it will up that contribution to 12.07 percent.
With increases in food costs and fuel costs, some systems are struggling with their auxiliary services expenditures, but Akin said Piedmont is avoiding that crunch as best it can.
While increasing fuel costs have put some systems in dire straits when it comes to their estimated expenditures, Piedmont does not have to worry since its students are transported by the Calhoun County School System.
Calhoun County Schools currently buses Piedmont’s students to all three schools, at no cost to the system, Akin said. The county does not charge Piedmont since it is cheaper for it to bus students to Piedmont’s schools rather than to other county schools that are located further from the city.
The only transportation increase Piedmont’s system had to prepare for was a 50-cent increase, up from $1 to $1.50, per mile for extracurricular and athletic trips via bus, Akin said.
Food cost increases have affected Piedmont’s lunchrooms a little more, forcing lunch room staff to find creative ways to prepare meals students enjoy, Akin said.
“We’re trying to create more menus that use commodities, but it’s difficult to use commodities that students want to eat,” he said.
Akin estimates food costs have increased by about 15 percent in the last year, which has made it harder for the system’s two lunchrooms to be self-sustaining, he said.
Expenditures for the nutrition program and transportation increased in this year’s budget by about $55,000.
Even with increases in some costs to the system, Akin is confident the budget will withstand the possibility of proration because of the careful planning of the system’s administration.
“We’re sitting as comfortably as we can be,” Akin said. “We’re fortunate because we’ve planning and made adjustments in our budget for that, and we’re going to be able to go on about our business as usual.”
The Board of Education will vote on the budget at its next meeting on Sept. 9. The public is invited to attend the meeting at 6:30 p.m. in the Piedmont High School library.
