Schools

School Budget Passes Divided Board

Chairwoman Alison Bartlett again warns that the Cobb schools are headed for a financial cliff.

The Cobb County Board of Education gave final approval to its 2012 budget this morning, voting 4-2 for a plan using more than $34 million in one-time funding.

Chairwoman Alison Bartlett and Smyrna’s Tim Stultz voted no, as they did when the . Kathleen Angelucci, who also voted no the first time, missed today’s meeting.

The $851.8 million budget for the year starting July 1 created little enough public controversy that no one spoke at the public forum May 31. But the school system has only $817.3 million in revenue projected to cover that spending, which includes the addition of about 70 jobs.

Find out what's happening in Kennesawwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The school district is filling the gap with $9.4 million in unused, one-time federal stimulus job funds and $25 million the county set aside to cover a midyear state funding cut that never came.

The school system has no such emergency reserve in fiscal 2012, so if the state returns to its habit of midyear austerity cuts, the county will have a hole.

Find out what's happening in Kennesawwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Even without state cuts, , the budget presents a “cliffhanger” for the , creating an unavoidable budget crisis next spring.

“We don’t have a sustainable budget,” she said. She’s worried about a repeat of spring 2010, when the school system laid off hundreds of teachers to close a budget deficit of more than $100 million.

“I know how horrendous the RIF was,” she said. “I am deeply concerned that in the first year of a new superintendent, he’s going to face something like this again.”

She didn’t criticize a second accounting move that is helping balance the budget without a tax increase: the use of excess money from the district’s second Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax to buy down the millage rate.

The school board last month from SPLOST II to be excess. Applying that money toward the local funding of the school system will keep the tax rate at 18.9 mills even though it’s 20 mills on paper.

The district’s chief financial officer, Mike Addison, explained that the board has no choice on how to spend the money. By law, the district can’t spend the money on capital projects missing from the 2003 referendum. Instead, the money first has to pay down debt, but the Cobb school system is debt-free. So the money must pay down the property tax rate.

Post 5 board member David Banks, representing East and Northeast Cobb, said that paying down the millage is a way of returning the money to Cobb taxpayers; otherwise, the district would have to raise the tax rate.

Stultz, who joined Bartlett and Angelucci in voting against using SPLOST money last month, said: “I’ll disagree with your philosophy, Mr. Banks.”


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

More from Kennesaw