Schools

Cobb School Board Adopts Tentative Budget

Additional changes have been proposed to the $894 million budget approved by a 4-3 vote Monday.

The Cobb Board of Education has tentatively approved an $894 million fiscal year 2014 budget that includes additional revisions and is likely to be altered further before final passage next month.

By a 4-3 vote, the school board on Monday adopted a budget plan that retains five furlough days for all Cobb County School District employees, including teachers, but further reduces the number of proposed teacher cuts through attrition.

The tentative budget also calls for taking more out of reserve funds than originally recommended and makes a more generous assumption about the upcoming Cobb tax digest than the county tax assessor.

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Voting in favor of the tentative budget were board chairman Randy Scamihorn of North Cobb, vice chairman Brad Wheeler of West Cobb and board members Kathleen Angelucci and David Banks, both from Northeast Cobb.

Voting against were board members Tim Stultz of Smyrna, Scott Sweeney of East Cobb and David Morgan of South Cobb.

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Tentative budget adoption is required by state law so the district can hold a mandated public hearing on the budget. That hearing will take place on May 14.

During a 90-minute work session on Monday, board members rehashed familiar arguments about how to solve an $86.4 million deficit.

The majority that voted in favor of the tentative budget expressed strong concern for larger class sizes and what they claim will be reduced instructional quality.

The approved budget calls for the reduction of 182 teaching positions through attrition, down from a revised proposal of 195.

Also changed in the tentative plan was the hiring of just 13 teachers to conduct online high school courses in a new instructional initiative, intead of an originally proposed 66. The virtual learning plan, dubbed "Strawman" by Cobb school officials, is an attempt at long-term cost savings that envisions shifting as many as 25 percent of all teaching positions away from classrooms by 2018.

"Our obligation is to those students and to those teachers," said Angelucci, who later expressed skepticism about the Strawman plan, saying "it's just a hope.

"We have nothing in the way of real numbers to show that it will work."

Angelucci reiterated previous comments that the board "dig down deep" and make budget cuts line-by-line. "It will add up," she said. "I'm ready, but I don't think we have time" for the fiscal year 2014 budget.

Stultz echoed the concerns of Sweeney and Morgan that the Cobb school district needs to begin adjusting to the reality of perpetually reduced revenues from Cobb property owners and the state.

Strawman, Stultz said, "is the only long-term cost-cutting strategy that we're looking at. We need to be looking beyond this year's budget. We need to move past furloughing teachers and cutting five instructional days."

Additional revenues, he said, are "not coming in any significant manner in the next few years."

Morgan said he's worried that "we are not making the structural and systemic changes that we need to make. . . . We're not solving anything."

Scamihorn, a newly elected board member and retired Cobb teacher and administrator, agreed with Morgan but countered that time was running short in the current budget process. He suggested that the board dig into fiscal year 2015 budget work in the fall.

"Let's get started in September and let's change the model," he said.

The budget plan includes withdrawing $32 million from district reserve funding; the original proposal urged the board use more than $22 million.

The tentative budget also calls for an assumption of zero growth in the tax digest for 2014, an estimate proposed by Scamihorn earlier Monday. The Cobb tax assessor is forecasting a decline in the tax digest of 2.3 percent.

While zero growth would yield an additional $3.5 million for Cobb schools, Brad Johnson, the district's chief finance officer, admitted that "we're taking a chance" at how the actual digest numbers will look in July.


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