Charles City superintendent proposed $10.2 million budget for FY2022-23 school year

With the goal to help Charles City students who want to go to college, the workforce, or the military after graduation, Charles City Superintendent of Schools

Dalphine Joppy presented her proposed budget in front of school board members Tuesday night.

Joppy proposed a budget of $10,241,703 for the FY2022-23 fiscal year. Of that amount, the superintendent is requesting local funding of roughly $6.2 million, an increase of $250,000 from the current year’s budget. By comparison, the current year’s operations total $10,726,611, with the county contributing $6,018,997 in local dollars.

The superintendent’s intent is to hire and retain good employees in a competitive industry. Joppy based her additional ask from the county on factors of an increased minimum wage, inflation of gas prices, increasing bus driver pay, increase in the cost of food, fulfilling shortages in staffing, maintaining current exiting level of services, and providing all employees a five percent pay raise.

The school’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) consists of a $130,356 request from the county. The state is providing $1.1 million in one-time funds to the school for construction projects that must be appropriated and spent by 2024.

Joppy spoke about the difficulty of maintaining and hiring employees due to the competitive field.

“We have some work to do when we look at surrounding schools,” said Joppy, mentioning budgets proposed by Mathews County, Surry County, and New Kent County. “We want to maintain the level of services and we’re asking for funds to keep positions that were funded by grants to keep those services.”

For school board at-large member Preston Adkins, he implicated that he hopes county leaders see the difficulty and need to keep teachers in the county.

“In all fairness, I do not think we can compare to New Kent,” Adkins said, mentioning the recent article in the Chronicle about the school system’s budget. “They are just in a whole new world over there and we are not in that league so we can’t compare.”

Joppy will present the budget to the county’s board of supervisors at a joint meeting on Monday, Mar. 21 at the school library.