School board members present budget to county commissioners

MADISON COUNTY, Tenn. — It was a second round of talking numbers for staff with the Jackson-Madison County School System as they presented county commissioners the budget unanimously approved Thursday night by the school board.

For two hours, county commissioners and staff with the school system went over the proposed budget for the 2016-2017 school year. The school board finalized those numbers Thursday night.

Friday morning was the first time commissioners saw the $101 million proposal.

“It’s not our job to manage them, but I think it is our job as good stewards to look into things and say ‘well, why is this like this?'” Budget Committee Chairman Doug Stephenson said.

School staff say the $5.1 million capital request would be used to make repairs and upgrades to schools, something commissioners say is a little concerning because they already have approved funding in past budgets for some of the repairs.

A big discussion topic during the meeting was how the current multi-million dollar requests relate to the initially predicted savings from the Vision 2020 plan.

During the meeting, commissioners questioned why the office of the superintendent is requesting more than $1 million for the next year.

Superintendent Verna Ruffin said she would like to use her portion of the funds to help high-performing student academic teams.

“I asked for additional funds in that line to be able to help schools when our students do those kinds of things because I expect that we are going to have more of them,” Ruffin said.

Ultimately, the final decision will be left up to the county commissioners. School staff say they may save $50,000 to $100,000 from the current budget.

Stephenson says the budget will be presented to all commissioners in June before going up for a final vote on July 1.