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GCCS says $100M budget funds raises and upgrades; superintendent supports new student phone restrictions
Summary
Superintendent Lochner described how Greater Clark County Schools manages a roughly $100 million budget across separate funds, said the district awarded significant raises through collective bargaining, and supported a new phone policy with classroom exemptions and staged enforcement.
Greater Clark County Schools Superintendent Mr. Lochner told the School of Talk podcast the district operates with a roughly $100,000,000 budget split into several legally separated funds—operations, education, debt service and an operations levy—and explained the limits that structure places on transferring money between uses. "You have the operations fund... then you have the education fund... and then you have the debt service fund... you can't transfer money from the debt service fund into the education fund," he said, adding that directors must track revenue sources and comply with the State Board of Accounts and district policies.
Lochner said the district prioritized rewarding employees this year after collective bargaining: "Each group got a significant raise," he said, naming employee compensation as a point of pride. He described the operations fund as covering maintenance workers, bus drivers, utilities and insurance, while education funding—largely enrollment‑driven—covers teachers’ salaries and benefits.
On school construction financing, Lochner warned of volatile bidding environments: when GCCS bid two elementary schools around the COVID period, costs rose 30–40% in a year and a half due to inflation; he said the bid process and subsequent construction scheduling are intentional steps in a multiyear program.
When hosts raised a recent law on student phone restrictions, Lochner said he supports the policy and described the district’s planned approach: treat the rule as applying during the school day with exemptions for classroom projects and IEP accommodations; initial enforcement likely includes taking the phone and returning it at day’s end, with repeated offenses requiring parental retrieval. "I support the law... The second time, the administration will probably take it and then parents are gonna have to come and get it," he said.
Lochner also summarized facility upgrades funded or underway—bathroom renovations, replacement of VCT tile with vinyl flooring to reduce maintenance, roofing repairs and parking expansion tied to the new natatorium—and said broadband/fiber capacity is being extended to support sports broadcasting and connectivity across athletic fields.
The interview did not record any formal board votes, policy adoptions or specified dollar sources for each project beyond the superintendent’s general descriptions.
