New Kent’s School Board approves revised FY2024-25 budget of $50.5 million

New Kent’s School Board approved a revised budget that topped more than $50 million for the FY2024-25 school year.

School members voted 4-0 to approve a revised budget of $50,596,117 for operations for the next fiscal year. District 4 representative Ron Vaught was not present at the meeting.

In March, Superintendent of Schools Brian Nichols recommended an amount of $51,145,884. That figure was presented to the county’s board of supervisors, with New Kent County Administrator recommending $1 million less for the school systems. After additional dialogue was conducted at their annual budget retreat, the final figure was reached.

In Nichols’ original budget presentation, he requested just over $22 million from the county level. Now, that amount is approximately $20.5 million. Nearly $900,000 in additional funding is expected to come from the state to make up part of the differential.

In total, the change from the original budget to the revised budget totaled $549,767. New Kent School’s Finance Director Haynie Morgheim presented the school board needs to hire contracted transportation for special education, a high school physical education teacher, and an elementary school counselor. In total, those additions totaled $192,099. Coupled with the first figure, Nichols and his staff faced $741,866 in cuts.

To account for the cuts, items that were decided to be reduced or cut included increasing a transfer to the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) to $300,000 (an addition of $200,000), anticipated healthcare savings ($179,285), postponing PreK-2 computers and devices ($110,000), hiring of an assistant high school principal ($106,616), hiring a secondary instructional coach ($78,180), hiring a secondary education gifted teacher ($71,072), and increasing the contingency balance by $3,287.

Positions on hold until the state budget include a fifth resource teacher at Quinton Elementary School and George Watkins Elementary School ($142,144), a maintenance supervisor ($106,616), and a secondary computer science teacher ($71,072).

The $50.5 million revised budget will now be submitted to county leaders for review. New Kent’s county budget is expected to be presented in May.