The Board of Education met on April 17, to discuss the first draft of the Fiscal Year 2024 budget and receive updates on the school system’s strategic plan.
Before the meeting began, Putnam County Middle School teacher Jan Bloodworth asked the board to once again consider decreasing the amount of testing in school.
As a teacher and mother, she stressed the testing has caused student fatigue and could lead to a lack of effort and higher stress levels for the students. Her husband, John Bloodworth, also spoke and asked the board to consider raising substitute teacher pay.
After their presentations, Superintendent Eric Arena presented the first draft of the Fiscal Year 2024 budget. The 2024 budget is seeing multiple general fund expenditures, including increases in health insurance employer contribution for both certified and classified employees, employee step increase, a $2,000 pay increase for certified employees, GNETS changes, and an increase due to transportation delays.
The health insurance employer contribution will increase from $945/pmpm to $1,580/pmpm, reflective of certified employees receiving $1,700,000 (effective for a full year) and classified employees receiving $750,000 (effective for half a year).
GNET changes expenditures are $500,000 due to governmental changes.
This cost is reflective of a change to employees who must now be hired by the school system and work with challenged students in school, rather than in the partnership previously established.
Transportation was previously approved in the FY 2023 budget, however, due to supply chain delays, new buses cannot be delivered until FY 2024.
Therefore, the net expenditure is estimated to be around $700,000.
Total operating expenditures are drafted at $49,547,140 for FY 2024, which is about a $5.7 million increase from the FY ‘23 budget. Due to this, the FY ‘24 ending fund balance is significantly lower than last year’s fiscal year, estimated at $11,740,201.64. Arena reported this draft is considered the “worst-case scenario” and is not fully reflective as they have yet to receive the tax digest.
Moving forward, Arena said they hope to cut at least 5% from the budget.
After the budget draft presentation, Arena presented an update to the Putnam County Charter System’s strategic plan.
This plan ties both into the charter renewal and Cognia and is built to be able to continuously “look forward.”
Since the last presentation of the plan, assistant superintendents, who are actively creating it, updated the plan’s five pillars: now being Student Achievement and Readiness, Effective Staff and Engaged Students, Operations and Support Systems, Culture, Community and Communication, and Safety and Well-being.
These pillars will be presented throughout the school year to show the community and Board of Education evidence of their success in the school system.
According to Arena, the evidence presented will not be solely data-driven and will include other forms of proof. For the current timeline, the Safety and Wellbeing pillar will be the first to be discussed in the July board meeting.
After walking through the timeline of the strategic plan presentations, the board moved on to the action agenda and unanimously approved two items.
The board approved the renewal of a Renaissance Software agreement, from Renaissance for $15,262.75, MTC, Inc. for $46,800, Pearson (NAVVY) for $17,600, and MAP (NWEA) for $34,294. According to Arena, Renaissance software is used for intervention strategies, MTC, Inc. supports and maintains the existing network, while NAVVY and MAP are for assessments and district accountability.
The board also approved DJED bids and quotations policy previously approved to be posted to the public. The revised policy was posted for a minimum of 30 days with no public comment recorded. With the policy approved, it is now in effect for the Board of Education to follow. To view the policy, go to the online agenda and click the link under “Approval of DJED Bids and Quotation Policy.”
The next public board meeting will be May 15 at 6 p.m., at the Putnam County Board of Education (158 Old Glenwood Springs Rd., Eatonton).