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On Thursday evening, Troup County School System presented its proposed FY 2024-2025 budget. The draft budget document covers the period from July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025.

School Superintendent Dr. Brian Shumate and TCSS CFO Dr. Scott Burckbuchler presented the draft budget to the Board of Education for review. The tentative budget is expected to be approved on May 16 with final approval on June 13.

Public hearings on the proposed budget will be held on May 6 and May 13 at 5 p.m.

The total budget comes in at $162,342,000, a 4.6% increase over last year’s total revenues. The majority of the budget $93,471,690 (58.3%) will come from state funds. Local funds provide $65,030,310 (40.6%). Other funding sources provide the remainder of the operating funds at $1.84 million.

The total operating funds of $160,342,000 are expected to be at a deficit of $2 million, which Shumate said would be made up with carryover funds from the previous year’s fund balance.

Shumate said the budget will allow the school system to continue providing services added in the last few years using stimulus funds which are now going away.

“This board has made bold decisions to fund these things. We have a nurse in every school doubling the amount of nurses we had four years ago, and we’ve been able to maintain that. Now we’re going to be maintaining it in the general fund. Every elementary school used to have a part-time nurse, now they have a full-time nurse,” Shumate said. “Number two, every school has an SRO. We added SROs at all 11 elementary schools.”

Shumate said salary increases are also planned for teachers.

“We’re studying salaries. We want our teacher salaries to be competitive, especially with those counties adjacent to us,” Shumate said, noting they expect the average teacher salary to increase by about $1,500.

The majority of the proposed budget will go to instruction at $94,987,686 (58.5%) with Maintenance & OPS making up the next largest portion at $18,448,933 (11.4%) followed by Transportation at $13,088,499 (8.1%). School Admin comes in next at $11,617,623 (7.2%) followed by Pupil Services at $9,992,362 (6.2%).

Other expense categories include Instructional Services $7,389,903 (4.6%)  General Admin $2,179,874 (1.3%), Business Services $2,008,525 (1.2%), Support Services/Other $2,041,095 (1.3%) and Transfers $587,500 (0.4%).

Teachers’ salaries make up $55,265,386 of the budget, an increase of 11.8% over last year.

The full proposed budget, including a forward from Superintendent Shumate, can be found at www.troup.org/departments/finance/budget-information.