DANBURY — As part of the budgeting process for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, the Stokes County Schools Board of Education decided Monday to tour school facilities to review capital outlay needs.
Administrators presented proposed budgets for both current expense and capital outlay at the April 15 meeting.
The budgets must be reviewed and approved by the school board then submitted to the Stokes County Board of Commissioners by May 15.
The proposed capital outlay budget total is $2,758,000, which is nearly the same as that of the current fiscal year of $2,750,000.
The budget document, which is available on the April 15 meeting “ Agenda with Links ” on the district’s webpage, shows that requests from school principals and maintenance totaled $7,141,500.
Administrators prioritized 35 projects from those requests in the proposed budget.
Board Member Justin Duncan asked about approximately $500,000 proposed in repairs to King Elementary School.
“I understand it definitely needs some work, but we’ve got some other schools that we’re not doing anything at, can you help me understand that,” Duncan asked Richie Roberts, director of maintenance / facilities, who presented the proposed budget.
“We have other schools that do have needs, but we feel like King Elementary is in desperate need, so to speak,” Roberts said.
Proposed repairs at King Elementary School include installing fencing around the perimeter to make the school more safe and building a new bathroom area between the office building and the cafeteria. One of the school’s bathrooms currently utilizes shower curtains as dividers.
“This is not ideal,” Superintendent Brad Rice said to the Board. “It is throwing good money after bad, and we realize that. At the same time, we have identified needs at that school that need to be addressed because taking that number of students and trying to redistribute them to other schools, we don’t have space for them without the ripple effect of affecting half the county in moving kids.”
Rice referenced the needs-based grant the district had hoped to apply for in January but failed to receive backing from county officials.
“While we would love to have a grant, and if we said that we would have a grant we could open a new building in five years we probably wouldn’t be asking for this today, but we don’t.”
Board Member Mike Rogers suggested that the group tour the facilities.
“We can look at this list all day long — we need to see these projects,” Rogers said.
The other board members agreed and plan to schedule two or three days to visit all the facilities as a group.
The proposed capital outlay budget does state that the district intends to pursue the North Carolina Needs-Based Public School Capital Fund grant in September.
Executive Director of Finance Lanette Moore presented the proposed current expense budget, which is also available through the “Agenda with Links” for the April 15 meeting.
The proposed current expense budget totals $17,519,921, which is a 7.89% increase from the final budget for the current fiscal year.
Moore said that the proposed budget was balanced by appropriating $1,054,957 from the district’s fund balance.
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