December 13, 2024
By: Dwayne Page
Where does the funding come from to support the DeKalb County School District?
During Thursday night’s regular monthly meeting of the school board, Director Patrick Cripps gave a school funding breakdown from local, state, and federal sources.
“I am going to break down our budget and where our money comes from,” said Director Cripps. “One thing I want to stress is that a majority of our money comes to us from the state and that is right at $24 million. When that money is sent to us it is not designated per school. Each student will generate $7,050. On top of that, students that may have unique learning needs will generate a percentage above that. Unique learning needs vary from how many hours that they may receive services outside the classroom so they will generate a little bit extra money for that,” explained Director Cripps.
“Another source of our income is from our county and that is right around $5.3 million that we get from the county. The next pot of money we get is from grants that we write. Our pre-K program includes four classrooms at Smithville Elementary School and one classroom at DeKalb West School. Those programs are totally funded by the state”.
“In the budget this past year was an innovative school grant for CTE programs and that was right at $500,000 to $800,000 and it was a two to three year grant”.
“Another pool of money we get is from federal dollars,” Cripps continued. “We generate about $2 million total but that is split up with special education money which is around $785,000. And then our Title I,II,III, & IV funding supports our English as a second language programs and it provides our RTI programs that we have at each school. RTI is remediation to intervention. That generates about $1.2 million”, said Director Cripps.
“That $7,050 that each student generates breaks down among different departments including salaries for educators and for bus drivers, purchasing buses, maintenance personnel and projects they do, custodial staff and the contracts we have for them, books, technology, and paying for utilities. All our departments are wrapped up in that $7,050 per student”.
“When the state switched to TISA funding they stopped saying this department is getting a certain amount of money versus other departments. They are now saying you are generating enough for a certain number of teachers. That $7,050 is taking care of all those departments for the county as a whole. Its not that Smithville Elementary gets a certain amount of money and DeKalb West gets a certain amount of money, etc. it is all pooled together and we are to meet the needs of those students at each individual school within the money generated for us,” explained Director Cripps.
“With the new 3rd grade reading law, we have money that is generated to provide support for those students in 3rd grade and also in kindergarten, first, and second grades and for tutoring in 4th grade. That money is divided within the TISA allocations sent to us from the state”
“Looking at our budget, nearly 70% of our budget is salaries. That is the majority of our budget. I have said many times if you are going to get good quality educators, you are going to have to pay them. I do think we have good quality educators. We are always looking to improve in areas we see we need improvement”
“This is how our budget is broken down for our district,” concluded Director Cripps.
Meanwhile in his monthly report on personnel, Director Cripps said Morgan Oyster has been granted a leave of absence as requested and Lori Vandergriff has retired as teacher at DeKalb West School.