By Michelle Key
Publisher
The Lee County School Board held their final public hearing on the fiscal year 2020 budget during last Tuesday night’s meeting. Following the public hearing, board members voted to approve the proposed budget as presented by Chief School Financial Officer Ken Roberts.
Highlights of the newly approved budget are as follows:
Revenues
- federal revenue of $8.7 million represents 8% of the overall budget
- local revenue of $34.17 million represents 33% which is higher than the average for other school districts
- state revenues come in at a budgeted $62.4 million, or 59%
- other revenues of nearly $230,000 fall under 1%
Expenditures - Instructional expenses are budgeted at $56.3 million which is 52% of the budgeted expenses
- Instructional support is budgeted as $14.6 million or 13%. This combined total of 65% of the overall budgeted expenditures going to classroom expenses falls above the state average
- the remaining 35% is split between:
auxiliary – 12%
operations and maintenance – 8.8%
debt service – 5%
capital outlay – 4%
administrative – 3%
other – 3%
Pupil and teacher expenses
The system average expenditure per pupil is $8,347 and the system has budgeted for a total of 42.34 teacher units including special education units.
In other business, the board: - held the first reading of policy 5.27 which is titled Supervision of Low Risk Juvenile Sex Offenders
- approved out-of-state field trips for the following:
- Beauregard High School cheerleaders
- Beauregard High School Track team
- Beauregard Elementary fourth-graders – 4-H camp
- West Smiths Station Elementary fifth-graders – Springer Opera House
- Smiths Station Junior High School football
- Smiths Station High School for community based vocational training at Paws Humane
- Smiths Station High School Ag students and
- Smiths Station High School girl’s basketball team
- approved the July 2019 financial report and cash reconciliation and
- approved several human resource recommendations.
The board meets on the second Tuesday of every month.