Charles City school board approves FY2020-21 budget

By Andre Jones | April 2, 2020 4:45 am

Charles City School Board members approved its FY2020-21 budget at an April 1 special call meeting.

In order to meet the state mandated deadline, school board representative gathered with essential personal in the high school media center.

Superintendent of schools David Gaston recapped the $11,826,693 operation budget that included the addition of 18 positions. He also highlighted the changes to the $1,400,301 in the proposed Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) that school board members asked for at the March 3 public hearing.

Despite school board members passing both proposals unanimously to send to the board of supervisors, changes are expected to take place, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic that is expected to have a financial impact on the state.

“Even though the General Assembly passed its initial budget, they are reconvening due to the COVID-19 crisis and will discuss not only the impact on next year’s budget, but the following year as well,” Gaston said. “We know there will be changes at the state and local level and we’re not going to get anything, but we had to have this approved today so that the board of supervisors can review it.”

School board leadership met with county leadership at a joint work session. There, dialogue exchanged on projects, positions, and monetary contributions that will be needed to help the county and schools’ function in the upcoming year.

District 1 school board representative Joy Harris commented that the schools are doing a lot of things to help the county, but the pandemic has had a slightly positive impact financially.

“We are saving some money in the transportation department due to schools being closed and that means the reversion back to the county at the end of the year could be bigger,” she said. “Hopefully, our discussions with the county will allow us to transfer those funds to take care of projects this year instead of next year.”

The school board is scheduled to meet on April 21 at the high school. Currently, the public meeting is scheduled to be limited to personnel but will provide live-stream access via the school’s Facebook page. The recently approved budget for the school system will now head to county leadership for consideration.