BOE Budget I

As I told you before, I plan to provide some detailed info on the school board budget and their ongoing quest for more and more money. Do they really need it or not. You decide.

As the county budget process gets into full swing, the single largest component of the budget is the school system. The board of education currently absorbs more than 52% or $36,200,000.00 of the county's budget. That means that more than fifty cents of every tax dollar you pay to the county goes to education.

We've already heard the BOE is planning to ask for anywhere from a million to more than two million dollars more for their operations budget. The only possible way that can happen is a large property tax increase.

One point the BOE has made is that they haven't asked for an increase in funding in several years. But there may be a good reason for that. Back in 2010, while I served on the board, the BOE voted to stop allowing out of county students to attend Loudon County schools. We had discovered there were hundreds of the OOC students in the system. Under the new regulations, the county school enrollment began to go down. Over the following years, the enrollment consistently fell which might make you think the cost of operating the school would also go down and for a couple of years it did. In fact, while I was on the board our expenditures went down every year, but for the last two years with the enrollment still falling, expenditures have risen.

Year   Eatons Ft. Loudon Greenback Highland P Loudon Ele. LHS North M. Phil. Steek.   Totals   Expenditures
2014   717 359 668 354 437 714 744 542 232   4767   $35,949,882.00
2013   724 347 639 377 472 720 767 592 234   4872   $34,858,171.00
2012   684 368 644 358 434 703 820 591 247   4849   $33,500,550.00
2011   691 295 617 364 410 711 822 604 249   4763   $34,545,371.00
2010   707 361 645 398 440 723 855 621 237   4987   $36,422,474.00
2009   698 383 663 394 454 686 850 587 267   4982   $37,426,834.00
2008   687 374 689 399 481 728 872 574 238   5042   $32,170,066.00
2007   716 390 668 407 490 646 887 557 245   5006   $29,748,016.00
2006   754 372 693 410 529 761 905 517 254   5195   $29,868,332.00
                             
Does not include Voluntary Pre-K                   $304,489,696.00

So, over the last two years with enrollment near it's lowest, spending has increased nearly two and a half million dollars.

Kind of a head scratcher. We'll look a little deeper at the numbers and see what else we can figure out.

All the numbers above are from the BOE and state audit.

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4/20/15