Phenix City Public Schools proposed budget enables 'wonderful things for kids'

Phenix City Public Schools will spend 8.4 percent more next fiscal year compared to the current budget but still will have a general fund reserve above the state-mandated level if the board approves the administration’s proposal.

Superintendent Randy Wilkes and Chief Financial Officer Cheryl Burns presented the request during Tuesday night’s Phenix City Board of Education work session.

The fiscal year 2016 budget, which begins Oct. 1, calls for $72,933,522 in expenditures, an increase of $5,628,241 over the current budget’s projection.

Alabama’s fiscal accountability law requires public school systems to have enough money in their operating balance to cover one month’s worth of expenses. Phenix City’s general fund reserve plunged to as low as 0.56 months ($1,984,612) in FY2010 in the wake of the Great Recession. Since then, the system steadily has boosted the reserve to a high of 1.62 months ($6,652,710) in FY2014. Subsequent spending on capital projects has dipped into the reserve, which is expected to be 1.45 months in FY2015 and 1.32 months in FY2016.

“Our goal, ultimately, is to lie somewhere in the 1.5 to 2.0 months in reserve,” Burns said, “but, with everything we’re doing in our district, we are very comfortable with the 1.32 because we are doing wonderful things for the kids of Phenix City.”

Such as spending $750,000 to equip each of the 1,500 students and 100 teachers at Phenix City Intermediate Schools (grades 6-7) and South Girard School (grade 8) with an iPad Air. Instructional technology specialist Tamara Sanders said districts typically see 3 percent of their students not participate because their parents or guardians didn’t give permission. So far this school year, 95 percent of the eighth-graders, 87 percent of the seventh-graders and 88 percent of the sixth-graders have accepted the privilege and responsibility to use an iPad Air, she said, with more opting in each day.

Next school year, Burns said, the plan is to add grades 9-12 to the iPad program.

Wilkes noted the healthy reserve has enabled the system to write checks instead of borrow money to pay for capital projects such as the $1.2 million for Central High’s new roof. The $1.1 million private fundraising campaign launched earlier this year by the Friends of Phenix City also will help. The bond issue of more than $10 million, which the board approved last year, provides additional revenue for the $3.1 million expansion at Central and the $1.7 million Dyer Family STEM Center.

Despite the state reducing Phenix City’s teaching units by nearly nine positions, the administration did not cut any staff.

“We moved money from federal to state and moved it around,” said Wilkes, in his second year as the system’s superintendent. “So we actually haven’t lost any physical bodies.”

Burns added, “We essentially managed our money better than the year before. It took some hard work, but we all sat down, and it was a very good team effort.”

Operations chief Joe Blevins listed the district’s priorities in its five-year capital projects plan:

• Close out the Central Freshman Academy project

• Finish the Central High re-roofing, expected to be completed next week.

• Construct the Dyer Family STEM Center.

• Construct the Central High expansion facility.

• Reroof part of Ridgecrest Elementary.

• Enhance the South Girard STEM labs.

• Make the transportation facility more efficient.

• Reroof part of Westview Elementary.

• Renovate facilities to keep the STEM initiative going.

• Add a multipurpose facility and perhaps more classrooms at a current school where enrollment growth makes it most necessary.

“This plan is very fluid, as it has to be,” Wilkes said. “… Something could be bumped up based on need.”

Mark Rice, 706-576-6272. Follow him on Twitter@MarkRiceLE.

This story was originally published August 25, 2015 at 9:35 PM with the headline "Phenix City Public Schools proposed budget enables 'wonderful things for kids'."