County budget earmarks more for schools

County commissioners opted to add an additional $9.3 million to the county’s school budget for next fiscal year, a figure which falls short of the school board’s requested amount by about $5 million.

The school board, as well as members of the North Carolina Association of Educators, petitioned the board of commissioners for additional funding since the county’s first proposed budget was revealed early last month.

They said that a bump in funding from the proposed $49 million to the requested $63.2 million was needed to give teachers raises next year, as well as to hire more bus drivers and continue pandemic-era programs within the school that cease to operate at the end of this last school year.

“It was my most sincere hope to fully fund the board of education request because I know the needs of our schools firsthand,” said Commissioner Tara Waters, who previously served as the vice chair of the school board.

With the additional funding, the final allocated amount that the county will invest into the school system next year comes to $58,345,000. The county Board of Commissioners hope that the extra money will fund the raises and programs that the school board requested.

“As a board, we received a lot of emails from people telling us to please fully fund our public schools, people who said that they’d be willing to put up with higher property taxes to fully fund the schools” Commissioner Cheryl Stallings said.

Stallings also said that the board received a significant amount of feedback from constituents that voiced opposition for raising taxes to more fully fund the school system. For those families struggling to make ends meet, she said a further tax increase would be a major challenge.

In the end, the board of commissioners met the school board more than halfway in their tug-of-war over the additional county funding request.

Stallings said the conversations that went on behind closed doors were spirited, and that a wealth of input was considered in the board eventually coming to its decision.

“This board has really tried to meet the needs of all of these schools, and some difficult decisions had to be made that this board did not take lightly,” she said.

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