Skip to content
The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen
Menu
  • Home
  • News
  • Community
  • Schools
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Obituaries
  • Sports
  • Mill
  • Flora
  • Print Archive
  • About
Menu

School budget fueling tax increase

Posted on May 15, 2008May 19, 2008 by Staff

by Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools district has requested a budget increase of more than $6.8 million this year, including more than $2.4 million to fund salary and benefit increases and other state mandates.

This would be a 12.5 percent increase over last year’s budget.

Based on last year’s state-mandated salary increases, school officials estimated salary increases for locally paid teachers to cost about $860,000, while the increase to the local supplement for state-paid teachers would total nearly $300,000. While teacher and staff salaries are paid by the state, the district funds additional teaching positions as well as a salary supplement for state-paid certified teachers.

Last year, the state increased salaries for certified teachers by 5 percent and pay for staff whose positions qualify by 4 percent. However, Gov. Mike Easley’s budget, released on Monday, includes a recommended 7 percent pay increase for public school teachers in order to bring the North Carolina average pay up to the national average.

While Easley proposed funding the teacher salary increase with a 20-cent-per-pack increase on the cigarette tax, locally funded positions and salary-supplement increases based on the state-mandated salary increase would be funded at the local level.
“We have to go to the county to request that money, and of course that means tax changes,” said Ruby Pittman, director of finance for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. Pittman said she has not yet determined how much more a 7 percent salary increase would cost the district.

“The [cost of the] increase on the teachers’ side could be offset by the benefit rate,” Pittman said, explaining that the benefit increases could be less than projected. The district’s proposed budget includes more than $300,000 in employee benefit increases.

Other budget drivers for the school district this year include enrollment increases, opening Morris Grove Elementary School and adding a senior class at Carrboro High School.

Enrollment is expected to increase by 323 students, which is consistent with enrollment increases of the last few years, but more than the increases in prior years, according to Pittman.

“It looks like our enrollment is on the swing upward again,” Pittman said.

According to the district’s proposed budget, costs associated with enrollment increases, including the costs of opening Morris Grove Elementary and adding a senior class at Carrboro High, total more than $2.8 million.

Overall, about $6.2 million of the $6.8 million budget increase request would fund the continuation budget, while the remaining $600,000 would pay for new programs and services.

County staff will present a proposed county budget, including budgets for both public school districts, to the Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday. The commissioners will approve a county budget by the end of June.

Web Archive

© 2025 The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme