Although the projected budget for the Walker County school system is ballooning by more than $7 million for the upcoming fiscal year, school officials are not planning to raise the amount of local taxes they collect from property owners.

According to Phyllis Copeland, director of financial services for the school system, the additional money for the budget is coming from the state.

“This year our state revenue is up,” Copeland said. “Our equalization grant was up, kind of unexpected. This is part of the equalization funding given by the state.”

The equalization funding provided by the state is based on the school system’s estimated property wealth within its district, compared to other systems. The funding designed to equalize the amount of money each system has available to meet its operating costs.

Copeland said of the equalization funding, “It is to equalize our funding because a mil in Walker County would certainly not be the same as a mil in Cobb County.”

The proposed budget for the Walker County school system is based on the combination of funds from three sources: local, state, and federal. The percentages of this money is 26 percent from local dollars, 68 percent from the state, and 6 percent from federal dollars. Last year's budget broke down as 29 percent from local dollars, 64 percent from the state, and 7 percent from federal money.

Neither of these breakdowns include the current sales tax collected through ESPLOST (education special purpose local option sales tax) approved by voters in 2006 for capital improvement projects like new school buildings. According to Copeland, the system has collected more than $5 million in sales tax during the past 12 months.

Copeland said 17 percent of the state funding that is given to the system comes from the equalization grant she described.

“It's really based on a difficult formula of how they rank the systems by property wealth,” Copeland said.

Basically, the state ranks all the school systems in the state according to property wealth. It then determines the amount of money the 75-percentile system generates from property taxes. The state then gives money to the other systems below that 75-percentile threshold to equalize their funding to the same amount as that of the 75-percentile system.

Copeland said there are other factors involved in determining the state equalization money as well.

“They look primarily at our property wealth, but also at how much we get from our millage (property tax) rate, and our student population.”

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The proposed budget for 2009 for the Walker County school system is scheduled to be adopted by the Walker Board of Education on Monday, July 28, at 6 p.m. at the school system’s central office at 201 S. Duke St. in downtown LaFayette. The meeting is open to the public.

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Four big increases

According to Copeland, the projected budget for the 2008-09 school year is expected to be around $83 million in total expenditures. This is up from the 2008 budget that saw expenditures around $75 million.

Copeland said the increases in the proposed budget include four big expenditures: salary increases for veteran teachers of 15 years of service or more; step raises and benefits for all school personnel; rising fuel costs; and the purchase of new buses.

“These are the things that have most impacted the budget,” Copeland said.

Copeland said the greatest expenses are salaries and benefits to personnel.

“The state has put in a 2.5 percent salary increase for the certified staff,” Copeland said. “Of course, we always try to extend that to all staff, non-certified staff as well. The only additions to staff are those added to meet maximum class size or HiQ (highly-qualified designation of teachers) issues.”

However, Copeland said an increase in the local supplement for veteran teachers will also add substantially to the budget.

“The big news in salary and benefits to teachers is the increase in the local supplement. It’s an increase of $1,300 in the local supplement for certified staff that are at 15 years and above. This is the first time the local supplement has been increased since 1972. This will put us more in line with the surrounding counties,” Copeland said.

This increase by the Walker County Board of Education is intended to draw and to retain more highly-qualified teachers to the Walker school system.

“Typically, our supplement is one of the lowest in the state and is almost the lowest for Northwest Georgia,” Copeland said.

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For a list of salaries for all Walker County school system employees (certified and non-certified) go to https://www.audits.state.ga.us/esa/index.html: Click the “I understand …” button at the bottom of the screen. Click the “Local Boards of Education” choice. Click the “Select an Organization” menu and scroll down to “Walker County Board of Education.” Click “View Entity as PDF, Current Year.” Click “Open” on the box that pops up. The document will open in Acrobat Reader. You can browse the document to locate the salary of any employee in the Walker County school system. (Note: These are salaries for the 2006-07 school year. Salaries for the 2007-08 school year will not be posted by the Georgia Department of Education until after the beginning of the new school year.)

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Copeland said rising fuel costs were also greatly impacting the 2009 budget.

“Last year we budgeted $520,000 for bus fuel,” Copeland said. “This year we are budgeting $800,000 for bus fuel.”

Copeland also said the need to purchase some new buses by the county would also inflate the budget. "We have been planning this purchase for awhile," Copeland said.

The county has been saving money towards this expense for a while.

Copeland said the need to purchase the buses was to keep the county on the state’s suggested timetable for bus updating.

“Each of these buses cost around $80,000.” Copeland said.

Copeland said there were other one-time expenditures that the county was planning to make that included some technology updates in each of its high schools and a new parent emergency notification system to be implemented during the upcoming school year.

“Over the past few years we have been very conservative with our spending,” Copeland said. “But some of the things we could not have done over the last couple of years we are doing this year. We have the additional funding available this year and many of the things we are planning for are one-time expenditures that shoot the budget up.”

Property tax rate to decrease

Copeland said the good news about the budget to local taxpayers is that they won’t see an increase in the amount of taxes collected from them for school operations.

“The board is rolling back the millage (property tax) rate even beyond the ‘roll back’ millage rate,” Copeland said.

The millage rate and “roll back” millage rate for county agencies — schools, county government, and cities — is set by the county assessor’s office.

The new rate that will be revealed by the Walker school board is expected to be 17.45 mills. This is down from last year’s rate of 17.539 mills.

According to Copeland, the board will announce this change at a meeting on Monday, July 28, at 6 p.m. at the school system’s central office at 201 S. Duke St. in downtown LaFayette. The meeting is open to the public.

Copeland said the school system had been anticipating a decrease in revenue for fiscal 2009 because of the new repeal of much of the property tax that those 70 years of age and older are being granted, beginning this year by the assessor’s office.

However, the increased equalization money that the state is providing to the system is being credited for the reduction in the millage rate although the operating budget for the system is increasing.

BY THE NUMBERS: Proposed 2009 budget for the Walker County school system