DeKalb County property owners will pay more in school taxes next year while class sizes rise under an austerity budget approved by the school board Thursday.
The board voted to raise taxes. It also increased class sizes, even for special education students, while adding two furlough days for teachers and cutting the number of their aides.
The Fernbank Science Center suffered, too, but not as badly as previously proposed. The board cut $1.9 million -- about 40 percent -- from the center's $4.7 million budget; Superintendent Cheryl Atkinson had recommended a $3.2 million cut.
Overall, the district's budget was reduced by $77.5 million.
"A cut is a cut just like if you cut your hand, so it's going to hurt," said board member Pam Speaks, who was in the minority opposing both the tax increase and the budget cuts. Voting with her were Paul Womack, Nancy Jester and Don McChesney.
Voting for the cuts and the tax increase were: Eugene Walker, Jesse "Jay" Cunningham, Sarah Copelin-Wood, Tom Bowen and Donna Edler.
The tax increase was by 1 mill to raise another $14.8 million, pushing the limit to within a mill of the voter-approved cap of 25. The two furlough days come atop four furlough days implemented in prior years. All the furlough days would be teacher workdays and would not affect the attendance calendar.
The decision came only after board members spent more than an hour attacking one another, eliciting groans from the near-capacity audience. They argued about whether money was mishandled by officials in the administration that preceded Atkinson's.
"They act more like middle school students trading insults than adults trying to pass a serious budget," David Schutten complained afterward. He's the president of the Organization of DeKalb Educators, a teachers advocacy group. Despite the deep cuts, including the two furlough days and the loss of 200 paraprofessionals, he said he was satisfied with the outcome. After all, the board had tossed around the idea of cutting 300 paraprofessionals and adding a third furlough day.
"It could have been much worse," Schutten said.
On Wednesday, the board had talked about cutting an additional 10 days from the school calendar. Womack, who made the proposal, withdrew it Thursday, saying it was based on faulty information.
Kimberley Evans, a parent and former DeKalb teacher, was aghast by the outcome, though.
On the one hand, she opposes more taxes. "I would prefer to see more cuts than to give more money to a sinking ship," she said.
On the other hand, she fears what will become of the school system as teachers feel the squeeze of more students and less prep time. The north DeKalb resident has a son starting middle school next year, a daughter in elementary school and a little girl in private preschool. She's not sure she wants her youngest entering the school system. Indeed, she's not sure she wants any of them in DeKalb schools.
"I keep telling my husband, ‘Maybe we need to sell and get out of here.'"
Some, though, were happy with the outcome.
Tanya Graham, president of the parent-teacher-student association at Arabia Mountain High in south DeKalb, said the decision to keep buses to magnets and theme schools was a big one for her and other parents.
Two-thirds of the 1,400 students at Arabia Mountain ride the school bus, she said, because their parents cannot drive them. "Bus transportation was paramount to the existence of our school," she said.
The new general fund budget for fiscal year 2013, which starts July 1, is $760 million, but officials plan to spend only $752 million of that. They hope to end the next fiscal year with $8 million in reserves, said Michael Perrone, the chief finance officer.
The absence of reserves contributed to the dire situation this year. Previously, officials had supplemented budgets with savings as their revenues declined -- until there was no money left in the bank this year. Like DeKalb, other systems saw big dips in tax revenue as property values, a primary component of the tax base, continued their slide. Unlike DeKalb, most school systems in metro Atlanta had reserves to soften the blow.
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