The Cobb Board of Education has a adopted a tentative fiscal year budget of $1.3 billion that will not include pay cuts or furloughs for teachers and staff.
It’s the first step toward formal budget adoption in August, three months later than usual.
That’s because of delays in state funding since the Georgia legislative session was delayed due to COVID-19.
Nearly half of Cobb County School District funding comes from the state, which is cutting that amount this year by $62 million.
The district’s proposed budget includes a step increase for all eligible staff members. (You can read through budget overview information here).
“Now more than ever, our staff who have responded successfully and professionally to each obstacle they have encountered over the past several months, need to know that we are there to support them. They are our first priority because they make our students their first priority,” Cobb schools superintendent Chris Ragsdale said in a statement.
The school board also will be holding the property tax rate at 18.9 mills, which has stayed the same for nearly two decades.
The budget proposal would include using $31 million in reserve funds to help offset the state budget cuts. Funding under Georgia’s Quality Basic Education Act is expected to be $518 million.
Local property tax digest growth of 5.15 percent will yield an additional $48 million in revenue (for a total of ($541 million); therefore the district must conduct public hearings for what under state law is considered a property tax increase.
(More financials, including line-item details, can be found here in what’s called the budget popular report.)
Cobb schools also received nearly $16 million in CARES Act funding from the Georgia Department of Education, and this week was granted $8.1 million from the Cobb Board of Commissioners in more CARES Act funding for distance learning content.
Charisse Davis, one of three Democrats on the board and who represents the Walton and Wheeler clusters, advocates revisiting the Cobb senior tax exemption and closing some loopholes.
On Thursday she asked for information not included in the budget proposal that revealed that this year the senior tax exemption is worth $132 million, up from $122.7 million in 2019, $111.9 million in 2018, and $101.1 million in 2017.
However, she’s been unable to get the board’s Republican majority to consider the matter. Some of them favor working to change the state’s educational “Fair Share” formula, under which school districts must send the amount of 5 mills from their local property tax revenues to the state.
The Cobb school district said for FY 2021 that Fair Share amount is $166 million.
The Cobb school board is to hold one more public hearing on the budget, on Aug. 20, the same day it formally adopts it.
In the meantime, the board also approved on Thursday a spending resolution to fund operations for the month of August, with revenues of $107 million and expenses of $111 million.
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