Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools puts forward first budget since $5 million deficit

At a meeting next Tuesday, the Chapel Hill and Carrboro City Schools Board will propose the 2025-26 budget to the Orange County Board of County Commissioners after a year of restructuring to account for a $5 million deficit in last year’s budget. 

Andy Jenks, the CHCCS chief communications officer, said there are no big changes to the continuation budget proposal — the minimum budget required to keep school operations the same — this year versus last year. The total proposed increase in the total budget is just over 5 percent or $3.2 million, which is more than the average increase from the past five years of 3.73 percent. 

Jenks said the biggest item on this budget is a 3 percent increase in salaries and wages. 

“In public education, about 85 percent of our budget is our people," Jenks said. "So making an investment in the human resources of a school district is significant because we obviously want to recruit and then retain the best possible teachers and staff in public education."

George Griffin, chair of the CHCCS school board, said the wage increase is essentially an inflationary adjustment to staff compensation. 

Jenks said this year’s continuation budget proposal doesn’t cut anything, but he said in the past year they have had to make difficult decisions about staffing that have led them to their current budget proposal.

“Anytime you're making a budget request, we're going to advocate strongly for our students and our staff, but also be reasonable in what we request,” Jenks said.

Griffin said the commissioners frequently do not fund the full continuation budget due to the need most years to increase property taxes, which he said adds another layer of complexity to the process. He said if they don’t fully fund the proposal they will have to make cuts somewhere. This would be in addition to what he said was a 5 percent reduction in staff from a year ago from the restructuring.

Jenks said the reduction in staff didn’t necessarily always involve layoffs, and many staff were moved from one school into a vacant position at another, or vacant positions were just left empty.

Jenks said there is a separate expansion budget request which includes significant changes from last year's budget. He said it includes things like pay increases for hourly employees and employees with a masters degree, adding teacher assistants to elementary schools and adding months of employment to school counselors. 

Griffin said realistically the expansion budget request won’t get any traction with the county commissioners and he said an expansion budget has not been approved during his four years on the board. 

“But it does indicate to them what we really need in a perfect world, if we could actually expand our budget,” Griffin said. 

Griffin said after their proposal on Tuesday, the ball is in the commissioners court and they have until June to finalize the budget. 

@DTHCityState | city@dailytarheel.com