Metro School Board votes to spend reserves

Metro School Board members agreed Friday to pull approximately

$6.1 million from the school district’s reserve funds to fully fund their 2007-08 budget.

With these additional dollars Metro Schools total budget is now $597.6 million. Of that budget teachers will receive a 3 percent cost of living adjustment (COLA) raise and every item on the board’s unfunded priority list will be covered, which includes restoring teaching and custodial positions that were previously set to be cut.

Board Chair Marsha Warden said the board is now in the position of being a “funding body” after learning they would incur an additional $4.4 million service charge from the Metro Council when they approved the entire city budget Tuesday.

“We are not a funding body, we were not developed to be a funding body and yet from year to year we find that we are in a position where we are indeed a funding body,” Warden said.

The school district has used reserve funds in prior years and are looking at an estimated $50 million total reserve fund this year.

Board Member David Fox was the only member to suggest an alternative to removing funds from the reserve and proposing a teacher raise of only 2.4 percent and not funding every item on the unfunded priority list.

“The motion I made would have worked within the money that had been allocated and would not have dipped into our reserves at all and all of our employees would have received a 2.4 percent raise,” Fox said.

Director of Schools Pedro Garcia and board members agreed that spending the reserve funds on reoccurring budget items, like teacher raises, was not a good idea and agreed to allocate the $6.1 million to budget items like textbook purchases.

The Metro Council is set to vote July 17 on the board request for a supplemental appropriation.