The Lowndes County School District is expected to pass its Fiscal Year 2012-2013 budget at the July 13 board meeting, Business Officer Frances Goldmon said Friday. The $48.92 million budget includes funding for 13 new positions and employee raises.
New hires at the district’s three high schools will include a graduation coach — a position similar to a guidance counselor — at each school and an additional band director at New Hope High School.
The district’s three elementary schools will add an interventionist at each campus, a physical education coach and a new teacher at Caledonia Elementary and an assistant teacher at New Hope Elementary.
West Lowndes Middle School will receive a full-time, certified librarian, and New Hope Middle School will receive a full-time show choir director.
The new positions will cost the district $562,662.
More than 700 full-time, contract/agreement employees, including teachers, will receive a $500 salary increase, while bus drivers and bus aides will receive a $250 increase.
The budget anticipates a $564,531 surplus, even with a $234,448 increase to the technology budget and a $500,629 increase to the textbook budget.
Millage is expected to hold steady for a third year at 47.76 mills.
“Our expenditures are below revenue coming in, and that’s what you want it to be every year,” Goldmon said. “I think the greatest thing we have done out here is have a lot of meetings and planning. My big philosophy is budget by need.”
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
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