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The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board approved $1.15 billion operating budget for the 2009-10 fiscal year, which would include $351.4 million from Mecklenburg County. The budget was approved by a 6-3 vote.

The budget request will go to Mecklenburg County Manager Harry Jones later this week. Jones will present his proposed budget to county commissioners May 19, with a vote on June 16.

The CMS budget includes $51.1 million in reductions and redirections. The county portion of the reductions was in order to keep the request unchanged from last year while covering the costs of growth, operations and opening six new schools next year.

“The county indicated to us during the budget process that Mecklenburg was feeling the same economic woes afflicting the state and the nation – so we have not asked for an increase in funding,” Superintendent Peter Gorman said. “Instead, we have made significant reductions in our budget request to accommodate some painful financial realities.”

The district’s proposed operating budget totals $1.15 billion for the 2009-2010 year, compared to $1.19 billion for 2008-09.

Mecklenburg County had also requested that CMS show the impact of cuts that would reduce by 10 percent the amount of county funding. The district created four optional tiers of additional reductions totaling $35.1 million. If all tiers are used, the cuts would total $86.2 million.

“Nearly all of our budget is spent on salaries and benefits – 67 percent of our operating budget goes to salaries and 18 percent to benefits,” Gorman said. “That means that we can’t make cuts this large without cutting positions, and we’ve had to do that.”

The $51.1 million in reductions and redirections in the budget proposal included cutting 534 positions from the budget. If the district has to make the optional cuts described in the tiers, an additional 782 positions – including teachers and school administrators – would be cut.

“We want to keep these cuts as far from the classroom as we can,” Gorman said. “So the cuts we made first were in central administration and support, rather than making all the school-based cuts first. If we have to go into the tiers, those cuts will come at the school level.”
 

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