The Schools Budget

Well, I just had a very educational (no pun intended) experience. I attended the briefing on the upcoming school budget and I learned two things:

#1 - The KCS' (Knox County Schools) budget is a huge $350 million plus

#2 - The money comes from so many places, and at so many different times, it's no wonder that the schools are always out of money.

Over the course of an hour, I heard a presentation that described the budget process and fund allocation in a way that slowly, but surely, confused me to bits.

It began with a simple enough breakdown of where money was coming from (though they left out a good portion of unnamed federal funding) and digressed into a series of "expenditures" that no longer were accurate since the time they were proposed.

Here is my frustration. I want to understand, and I am going to go deep into this budget to find out really how much money is needed and how much is allocated. But the explanation was so overly complicated that it was difficult to follow much less comprehend.

Some highlights of the evening:

$4.41 million in new monies for staffing the new Hardin Valley School (one time expense)

$1.57 million for a "redesign" of Fulton and Austin Easy (and I don't mean aesthetically)

$1.37m Debt Subsidy

This above is an increase in the amount Knox county is paying in debt service. In the coming year, the total debt for the KCS is supposed to be around $25 million dollars. With my quick math, at an assumed interest rate of 5% that means the annual interest we are paying for our borrowed money is $1.5 million. This cannot be allowed, we have to be more responsible than this.

All in all, it was a very worthwhile excursion into the nitty gritty of how we finance our biggest county service. I know I'm not running for school board, but as the county commission has to approve the KCS' budget I plan on being deeply involved with cross examining the proposals.