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State budget office asks schools for $58 million as part of cost-cutting
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Published: November 18, 2008
Updated: 11/18/2008 03:00 pm
RALEIGH <-> The state is ordering school districts throughout North Carolina to return a total of $58 million to help cover a projected budget shortfall.
The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system is required to return $2.03 million – or about three-fourths of 1 percent of the total amount of state money it received this year.
The education cuts are part of a series of across-the-board cuts ordered by outgoing Gov. Mike Easley. Easley told all state agencies to trim their budgets in light of grave projections of a state budget shortfall that some state legislators believe could be as much as $2 billion.
The state is facing a shortfall because, in the bad economy, it is not collecting as much tax revenue as it expected. That means that, without budget cuts, the state would not have enough money to pay its bills by time the state's fiscal year ends next June.
As a result of Easley's order, the N.C. Department of Public Instruction was told to find $119 million worth of cuts. State officials were able to find about half that amount at the state level. The rest will have to come from local districts and charter schools.
The state is letting local school superintendents decide how to find the money, said Vanessa Jeter, a spokeswoman for the department of public instruction.
"The goal is always to minimize the impact at the student and teacher level," Jeter said.
Local superintendents learned of the cuts on Monday in an e-mail sent out by a state education official.
Forsyth County's superintendent, Don Martin, said today that the school system is compiling a list of items that can be cut to give its share to the state.
"It's going to have to be done," Martin said. "We've got sort of a laundry list of things that we can look at. We'll try to come up with probably several ways that we can get to this and each will have their pains associated with it.
"We don't have a fund balance," he said. "Some school districts will be able to go to their reserve, their fund balance, and absorb it. For us, we'll have to account for it.
"We're still going to have the basic supplies for students this year," he added. "It's not like it's the end of the world; it's just going to require some sacrifice to do it."
The school system has about $200,000 set aside to replace some desktop computers that will likely be turned back over to the state, Martin said, along with salaries for some positions in the school system's central offices and money saved if school officials decide on a moratorium on out-of state travel for school officials.
The school system's finance committee will meet Tuesday to discuss the issue, Martin said.
Each school district's amount of repayment to the state was calculated based on its average enrollments. The repayments, known as "reversions," are highest in Wake County, which is required to pay back more than $5.4 million.
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