A breakdown of revenues and expenditures in the 2007-08 school budget can be found here.

The Coweta County Board of Education approved a final 2007-08 budget of $166.5 million for the 2007-08 school year at its June 12 regular meeting, held at the Werz Boulevard central office in Newnan.  The budget covers the new fiscal year which begins on July 1, 2007.

The budget for the next fiscal year projects no increase in the Maintenance and Operation school millage rate of 18.59 mills on Coweta County property taxes next year. The budget projects a 5.75% rise in the Coweta County tax digest.

The school system’s budget also projects the use of up to $3.5 million in reserves to balance the budget. A similar amount of reserve spending was budgeted for the 2006-07, but Superintendent Blake Bass noted that the school system’s current school year ended far enough under budget that no budgeted reserves were spent, and the total system reserves were actually increased.

The General Fund Budget of $166,525,599 tentatively adopted by the school board reflects an increase of $12.2 million over last year’s General Fund budget of $154,276,878.

The General Fund budget is the operating budget for the school system, and is funded by a combination of state revenue and local sales taxes. The General Fund includes instructional funds, school system personnel, pupil services, school maintenance and operation, transportation and other day-to-day costs of operating the school systems.

Outside of the $166 million Operations Budget, other school system budgets include the Special Revenue Fund (which accounts for state and federal funding sent to special federal programs such as Title I and federal lunch programs), the Capital Projects Fund (for construction) and the Debt Service fund. School construction and debt service are funded principally by the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) funds and some state funding.

Those budgets, combined with the Operations Budget, total $248 million.

School System comptroller Keith Chapman reported that most of this year’s increase in the school system’s Operational Budget is driven by personnel costs (including new teachers to keep up with student growth), step raises and a 3% cost-of-living raises to all employees.

This year’s budget include a continuation of state budget cuts. Cuts in state educational funding began in the 2002-2003 school year for all Georgia school systems because of difficult economic conditions in Georgia. The state has restored some of that funding last year and this year, with a cut of only $1.9 million in 2007-08 and $2.1 million in 2006-07, instead of the previous year’s $3.9 million cut.

Over the five-year period since state funding cuts began the Coweta County School System has experienced an estimated $14.8 in cumulative cuts of its state funding.