Guilford County School Budget Factoids

"...Green recommended that the school board ask the commissioners for $3.4 million more in county funding for its operating budget and $3 million more in capital funding to cover building maintenance.

We're in a crisis situation

Skip Alston

...Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston [GH: who wanted to profit from Guilford County building a parking deck for the downtown hotel?] made it clear that he expects the school board to make active budget cuts...

...The current state budget eliminates $9 million in funding for Guilford County Schools for 2010-2011, and North Carolina State Superintendent June Atkinson on March 1 told school systems to plan for additional reductions in state funding of up to 4 percent, which for Guilford County Schools would be $13.8 million. Green has requested a $651 million budget for Guilford County Schools for 2010-2011, $9 million more than this year's $642 million budget.

...The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education has already approved a reduction in force of 600 employees.

...Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has 9,000 teachers and a total of 19,000 employees. It's almost twice the size of Guilford County Schools, which has 5,000 teachers and 10,000 employees.

Given the possible numbers of layoffs in other school systems such as Charlotte's, Green's plan to eliminate 25 positions, only one of which was filled, didn't sound like fat-cutting to the commissioners. Those 25 positions are a quarter of one percent of the Guilford County Schools workforce." [GH: Compared to about 3.2% for Charlotte]

Paul Clark
Rhino