Talbot school board OKs budget.
EASTON — The Talbot County Board of Education discussed and approved the FY17 budget on Wednesday, June 1 at a special meeting.
The board received the final letter of approval from the Talbot County Council on May 25 and also received the items that the Talbot County Council suggested the board include in nonreccuring costs. The council went through and approved $140,000 in nonrecurring costs.
The items the council wanted the board to focus on for nonrecurring costs included external hard drives and adapters, keyboards, wireless access points, ethernet managed switches and desks, chairs and tables.
Nonrecurring costs are items in the operating budget that you can identify that are usually one-time cost items. Once they are identified a letter must be sent to the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) and they will approve which items can be considered nonrecurring and they are not considered part of maintenance of effort.
The board originally requested for $174,365 for nonrecurring cost items which was revised in May.
"The Maryland State Department did not approve whiteboards or the bleacher repairs as nonrecurring," Superintendent of TCPS Kelly Griffith said. "We thought we could get those in there but they didn't approve it."
The council did approve band instruments, textbooks, custodial equipment and more.
The original request for capital project board funds amounted to $316,000 and the council is funding $72,000. The board then decided cut the cargo van from the budget and moved $200,000 to the operating budget to fund student laptops.
The council did approve the White Marsh portable awnings and the Easton High stadium bleachers.
"The county council did make it very clear it was not their intention to cut the student laptops but to put them from capital into operating," Griffith said.
The board of education originally made a request of $37,903,873 for the operating budget but it was revised to $36,903,137. The county council agreed to fund $36,690,230.
In total, combining these three sections, the council is funding $36,902,230 which required the board of education to cut $491,272 worth of items from their budget.
Among the proposed cuts made by Griffith was $100,000 from transportation, $70,000 for summer school, $21,000 from compass learning and more.
"We're just trying to do the best we can do, we're really going to be tight but I do believe that we are really trying to be good fiscal stewards of taxpayer money, trying to find any efficiency we can, trying to be creative, trying to look for those alternative opportunities and what benefits students," Griffith said.
The budget was unanimously approved by the school board.
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