The Cherokee County School Board has approved a 2017-18 budget that calls for $382 million for day-to-day operations, with 71 percent of the total in classroom instruction, officials said.
The budget seeks to continue to decrease class sizes and purchase new instructional resources for elementary English and language arts classes, officials said.
The district also plans to reconfigure the entrance road to Boston Elementary School to improve safety; retrofit six more schools with security foyers to limit visitor access; purchase 19 new school buses, and pilot a new online GPS system to let parents track the locations of their children’s buses.
The district also seeks to improve its credit rating by increasing operating reserves to $49 million and designating $29 million for building fund reserves.
Officials point out that while the state increased funding to cover its part of a 2 percent salary increase recommended by the governor, it continues to withhold $4 million earned by the district as an “austerity budget reduction,” money that could have gone toward class-size reductions.
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