A couple weeks ago I asked, “How much is enough?” Apparently the answer for FY2018 is $1,010,303,466 for the General Fund ($1.7 billion for all combined funds including E-SPLOST).
On Monday, the DeKalb Board of Education approved a FY2018 Tentative Budget. The Final FY2018 Budget Adoption and Adoption of Tax Levy is scheduled for Tuesday, June 27 at 7pm.
The administration is currently requesting no raise for any employees and no decrease in the millage rate. Given the increase in state QBE funding and expected increase in local property values, the school district is expecting to take in $32 million more than last year in the General Fund.
A majority of that will go to a mandated 16.8% ($14.5M) increase in state retirement funding and appropriation of the annualized raise from last January.
Let me know your thoughts and questions.
Related Documents
Tentative Consolidated Budget FY2018
FY2018 Tentative Budget Detail
2017 Tax Digest Five Year History of Levy
2017 Notice of Property Tax Increase
Annual Operating Budget Development Process Calendar for FY2018
Tuesday, June 27, 2017 (11:30a.m.) – 2nd Millage Rate Hearing
Tuesday, June 27, 2017 (6:15p.m.) – 3rd Millage Rate Hearing
Tuesday, June 27, 2017 (7:00p.m.) – Final FY2018 Budget Adoption and Adoption of Tax Levy
“Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
Wow. I’m not that great at math but isn’t that about $17,000 per student based on 100,000 students?
Fulton County Schools – FY 2018 Budget Information
The fulton budget book includes:
– district financial policies
– a detailed chart of accounts
– revenue and expenditure summaries (16 pages each)
– enrollment and staffing summary including projection methods
– staffing allocation formulas
– qbe formula pages
FY18 School Allotment Guidelines – 33 pages
FY18 Budget Book – 421 pages
FY18 Budget Brochure – 2 pages
FY18 General Fund Budget FAQs –1 page
FY18 Tentative Budget Summary – 1 page
This is substantially more information than DeKalb citizens have available, and includes key data such as
– $ budgeted per pupil
– # of pupils estimated
– average teacher salary and benefits ($80,147!)
– significant school level detail
It has a lot of info about the PROCESS so that the public, and dare I say the boe, has a better chance of understanding the budget.
Wow! We are stunned! Are you kidding! We have tried to give Green and the BOE the benefit of the doubt..Not requesting a raise for any employees!!! Wow! We feel really bad for the teachers and staff members! We do realize that Green is setting himself up for promotion…Yes.. and the BOE! Do o you have problems sleeping @ night or looking in the mirror? If not, you should. Shame, Shame, Shame. No wonder this School Board and this County is in such a mess! Why? People..We must unite against this foolery! Document and report..Expose the frauds and their illegal and I’m!Oral acts against The People.
Members of the BOE have requested various things for this budget. You would need to watch the budget discussions to see who wants what.
I recommend you contact the board individually and ask them what they want and what it will take for them to approve this budget.
The Governor increased state QBE funding and asked that it go towards raises for the teachers. Budget appropriations have increased by 30% since FY2014. DeKalb Schools has the second highest millage rate in the state and has the worst compensated teachers in the metro Atlanta area. It will be hard for me to approve this budget without a significant raise for school house employees.
Something MUST be done! Gov. Deal apparently doesn’t really understand the depth of the problem in DeKalb or just doesn’t care to do anything. What he did before was just too little and the Nancy should have bask for recommendations, etc. to help correct the county’s multitude of problems. Stan you can’t do it alone. Where can we get help, what can we do to drain the swamp, have a nationwide search for a well and I do mean well qualified superintendent whose concern is centered on students, teachers, and the building s ….not trailers covering every inch of land!
Green needs to go! Interesting how all his disciples (Gokce etc all) have been incredibly quiet. They look like fools. This system is a joke!
This is positively insane. Spending $17,000 per student and getting the mediocre results we’re seeing should be embarrassing to any education professional. I, too, had high hopes for Dr. Green, but all I’ve seen him do is add to the bloated central office, add administrative layers, refuse to give teachers a decent raise, and continually raise our taxes. I guess when an un-elected, un-accountable bureaucrat runs the system, you can expect nothing more. It’s truly unfortunate that we don’t have a board full of Stan Jesters demanding excellence for our kids.
What’s the latest by on the 2018 school budget? It has been shown that the BOE did not follow the rules on the naming of John Lewis ES, was that corrected? With previous problems with accreditation, why can’t this board of education follow the rules and the guidelines set forth? These are the same reasons the district office, Regional Superintendents, Principals, Asst. Principals, the BOE does not follow the rules. We all know that Green will be gone just as soon as he finishes his academy. Then what? We will be back @ square one. Our poor students will continue to suffer@ the hands of unethical adults. What is the assignment of the 9 reassigned principals? What about the Asst. Principals that were under the reassigned 9? From the information we have, they should all be reassigned as well. Upholding wrong doing because a person is your fraternity brother or sorority sister, or, because you are in ” the clique” is wrong, unethical and shameful! This district continues to lose the best and the brightest.
Wow. Central Office is bloated!!!!!!! Dekalb has already lost many of its best teachers to other counties. I don’t know if Dekalb is worth teaching in any more. The administrators do not respect the teachers and paper pushers are paid much more than the teachers who really do the educating. Why do we even need a Central Office. A school only needs teachers, a principal, and support staff. We have lost focus of the reason for schools. Education. Pure and simple.
Thank goodness everyone is on the same page. Now can some of you intelligent legal minded people tell us what the hell we can legally do to drain the swamp and get a team in place to right this ship? Jim Cherry must be turning over in his grave. Some people didn’t care for all his ways but by gosh he damn well got the County School System rated either first or near the top in the 70’s! I want it there again and the students and teachers deserve it! Please leaders step forth and you will find support from us.
So, general fund maintenance & operations is $105,314,309. How do you determine what makes up that amount? I can’t seem to tie it in the detail report or understanding what lines are making that up.
I’m assuming these are mandated funds and categories. Is that correct?
Can anyone tell us how students are determined to be Special Education Students? How long does it remain that way? How can parents remove their child from that label of Special Education student? Who writes the IEP’s? Who monitors the IEP’s? Who determines how many service hours each student receives? From what we have been told, IEP’s are out dated, and documentation is backdated. Isn’t it illegal to backdate documentation? How often are Psychological Evaluations done on special education students? From what we are told there are hundreds of Psychological Evaluations that are outdated and backdated. Who is responsible for monitoring this process? According to what we are being told, parents are never contacted about meetings, but it is documented they were. What is a 504? A lot of lies, mismanagement, unethical doings and wrong doings directed @ special education students and their parents, in particular, in the Southside schools.Can someone look into this?
I’ll grant that my family lives on the north side of DeKalb but one of my children is a special needs student w/ an IEP. He was placed at Coralwood and now that he has aged out he will attend Chesnut in an inclusion class.
In my experience….
The IEPs are composed by the special ed staff at the school and my signature is legally required. My attendance at meetings is also required, as well as documentation of all attendees. I received both email and printed copies of meeting requests via my son’s communication folder. I could request a reschedule or additional meetings with additional staff at any time. If I didn’t approve of an element of the IEP, my objection was noted and the IEP modified. If I had a question, it was noted in the meeting notes along w/ the answer. At every meeting or request, a copy of my legal rights in the state of Georgia was presented to me, whether I felt I needed them or not. Both my husband and I received copies of the completed IEP electronically after the meeting.
Now that my son is in a different school I’ll be putting new names and faces to the same roles and I expect that process to continue. Because I will go medieval if it doesn’t. 😉
Mr Green,
If parents are not being contacted for IEP meetings, please encourage them to contact the DeKalb School System Department of Special Education. Ms Duncan is correct. Parents should be invited to the IEP Meeting. If the time is not a good time, then the parent should request a better time. Please find a handout from the Georgia DOE. Hopefully it will provide some information that may be helpful. Please encourage the parents to stay active and involved in the education of their children.
https://www.gadoe.org/Curriculum-Instruction-and-Assessment/Special-Education-Services/Documents/Parents%20Rights/Special%20Education%20condensed%20Parents%20Rights%20Revised%20July%202014.pdf
Let me ask a question about the removal and replacement of so many APs and Principals. These are the very people who hire teachers and build a master plan for the operation of the school. Does anyone think these are easy jobs? Are students scheduled for their classes? Do all these schools have a strong instructional schedule in place? Has anyone checked on this? I know last year principals were called in to the supt. to explain why schedules were not in place. Have teachers been hired? Looking at PATS , I see hundreds of teaching positions open. Without teachers again – that’s where we are, I believe. With all the chaos over reassignment(!), I doubt that any attention is being paid either to schedules for students and teachers and actual teacher hires. Another question for the supt’s office: I note that several schools have “must” beside job requirements. Does anyone realize that requiring a candidate be bi-lingual is illegal and highly possible grounds for a lawsuit? This is especially true in a school setting that advertises itself as not discriminating on the basis of race, gender, religion. OH DEAR. Someone needs to get the requirement of bi-lingual eliminated immediately or there really could be hell to pay. In some schools, it’s clear that the requirement has been added to eliminate one or more candidates from consideration. That’s foolishness! That’s discrimination at its height, and it does not go unnoticed. Let’s not let all these schools have a sorry beginning because the whole spring and summer have been wasted firing, demoting, or whatever term is currently being used. I want to see in writing that all schools in DeKalb have a Principal, APs as needed, and a strong master schedule in place. Why does DeKalb always have the same problems, year after year? Stan, thank you for any input.