School board approves $69 million budget | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    The Beaufort County Board of Education held its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday (8-20-11) with its new chairman, Mac Hodges, presiding. You can review the Board Member's packet by clicking here.

    You can see the opening of the meeting along with the public recognitions in the clip below:



    The second clip includes a presentation and discussion of awarding a cleaning contract for Central Services facilities. The presentation explains why it is being brought back to the board. This clip also includes a "technical correction" on the Attendance policy. The Board then approves the Personnel Agenda as presented in Closed Session and two field trips.



    The next clip deals with the proposed FY 2011-2012 budget. Finance Officer Laurie Modlin reported that the total budget is $69,001,793.32. Of that, $11,995,150 is from county current expense appropriation with an additional $1,131,039 in capital outlay. The budget appropriates only $28,892 of unrestricted fund balance to the Current Expense but an additional $555,177 to the "Other Local Fund" which is the practical equivalent of Current Expense but shields those funds from having to be divided on a pro rata share with the charter schools. Thus, of what was projected to be nearly a three million fund balance, they used less than $600,000 for this year's expenses. Modlin mentions that the crunch will come next year unless additional revenue is forthcoming and the school system will be facing substantial reductions as a result of the Federal Stimulus money drying up. We'll have more on the budget at a later date after the FY 2011 audit is received.

    Number crunchers will not that the Budget Resolution gives the superintendent virtually unlimited discretion to transfer money within a fund. Thus, the budget means very little except at the Fund level.

    You can review the adopted budget here: FY 2012 Budget.

    The video clip below contains the budget presentation, a brief discussion and the unanimous vote.