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Laurens 55 board reviews two budget options as teacher pay mandates strain general fund
Summary
At a regular meeting, the Laurens 55 School Board reviewed two general-fund budget versions — one with no millage increase and one tied to a 4.4-mill increase — to cover state-mandated teacher pay steps, consider retaining six FTEs or cutting them to save about $238,000, and to await county reassessment numbers before finalizing any tax request.
The Laurens 55 School Board spent the meeting reviewing two general-fund budget options and the revenue choices that would support them, with staff warning that state-mandated teacher pay increases and uncertain reassessment numbers could require a millage request.
Miss London, the district staff member leading the budget presentation, told the board she prepared two budget versions: “The first version is with no millage increase, and the second version is with a 4.4 millage increase.” She said the state-mandated $2,000 step increase for each teacher salary step accounts for $898,186 in additional salary costs and raised the entry-level teacher pay to about $50,500 in the proposed schedule.
Why it matters: The district must submit a balanced budget; Hague in-state funding changes have raised salary obligations that the state did not fully fund, leaving local districts to close the gap either by cutting positions or by asking property owners for more revenue.
Miss London said noncertified staff on salary schedules would receive a step plus a roughly 2% scale increase, while administrative staff (principals and assistant principals) would receive a step only. Under the no-millage version staff presented, the district would remove six full-time-equivalent positions from the general fund to yield about $238,000 in salary savings (the figure excludes associated fringe and insurance costs). “So that accounts to about $238,000 in salaries,” Miss London said when describing the positions under consideration.
Board members pressed for more detail on which jobs were targeted and asked for an updated stipend reconciliation; Miss London and Doctor Penland said staff would not name individual positions in open session but would provide more detailed reconciliations and a corrected stipend list. The board asked specifically whether the six positions included teachers; Miss London confirmed they do not.
On revenue, Miss London said the district budgeted $1.6 million in lieu-of-taxes (FELO) revenue but is on track to collect more than $2.0 million this year; she recommended budgeting conservatively but noted any surplus could be returned to the fund balance when the budget is finalized. For ad valorem (property) taxes, staff presented a no-increase projection of roughly $14,000,000 and a target of $15,125,000 if the board pursued additional mills — an increase that would require setting a millage rate after the county issues final assessment numbers.
Staff cited county-provided estimates of the value of a mill for all four county school districts at $263,794.10 and estimated Laurens 55’s share of a mill at about $90,000; Miss London emphasized these are preliminary figures that will change when the county finalizes reassessments.
The board also discussed that Laurens 55 is in an equalization agreement with neighboring Laurens 56: the district cannot ask for a higher millage increase than Laurens 56. Miss London said both boards will consider the same pair of budgets (no increase and a 4.4-mill request) and that if either board votes no, neither district in the agreement would receive the increase.
Other line items noted in the budget review included a recategorized document-management expense to scan and store student records for the state-mandated retention period (99 years), budgeted at roughly $10,000 annually for inactive-file scanning and storage; an annual background-check service for employees and volunteers (Background Investigation Bureau, reclassified to software account 3345); and a planned contract termination for the district’s energy-savings vendor at the end of September, with three months of vendor payments remaining.
Board members asked for follow-up information: a reconciliation that links stipend titles to the employees paid, the detailed administrative-step correlation the district uses (HR maintains the correlated placement for administrators who transfer in), and a clearer tally of what granting the 2% percentage increase to principals and assistant principals would cost.
No final millage vote occurred. Staff said they will compute final millage needs once county reassessment figures are available and will return with the requested details; the Laurens 56 board was also scheduled to hold a first reading on the same options. Chair adjourned the meeting after staff closed the presentation and members’ questions.
