State budget boosts Guilford schools

Jul. 13—GUILFORD COUNTY — The state budget that took effect on Monday makes a big difference to school systems, the Guilford County Board of Education was told Tuesday night.

Providing an update on how the Guilford County Schools' budget looks after Gov. Roy Cooper signed the state budget on Monday, Chief Financial Officer Angie Henry said the budget looks more solid than it has in a long while.

"We are in a good place with our budget, a better place than we've been in lots and lots of years," she said.

Although the fiscal year begins each July 1, legislators in the General Assembly rarely have a budget adopted by then.

But this year's $27.9 billion state budget also was boosted by a projected $6 billion in extra revenue expected to be collected by next June 30. It includes average pay raises for teachers for the upcoming school year that will grow from roughly 2.5% to 4.2%, with first-year teachers seeing $37,000 base salaries.

Henry said all school system employees' pay will increase so that the minimum will be $15 an hour.

One figure that will not be firm until after the new school year starts is the state allotment for paying teachers, but school system officials expect to wind up with a state allotment of 64 fewer teachers than before the COVID-19 pandemic because of declining student enrollment, she said. That was built into the school system budget.

According to enrollment figures posted on the school system website, enrollment during the 2019-20 school year, the first full school year affected by the pandemic, was 71,414. That dropped to 69,311 in 2020-21, and even though fully in-person classes resumed in August 2021, enrollment dropped again to 68,202 in the 2021-22 school year.

Normally, the N.C. Department of Public Instruction adjusts what the state provides to each school system to pay teachers based on whether student enrollment after the first 40 days of school meets, exceeds or falls short of what it was projected to be.

The state has not adjusted that state allotment since the 2019-20 school year because school districts across the country have seen enrollment declines because of the pandemic. In some cases, parents have moved students to homeschools or charter schools to avoid mask mandates, and in some cases students who were struggling academically have dropped out.

But for the 2022-23 school year, those adjustments will take place.

On a related issue, the school system will receive an increase of $2 million for state-mandated distributions to charter schools operating in Guilford County, she said. The distributions are based on the number of students enrolled in the charter schools.