Horry County Schools proposes $1.2 billion budget for 2024-2025 school year
HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) — The Horry County School Board met Monday night and discussed a variety of pay raises and security upgrades for the upcoming school year.
Both teachers and employees would see increases in pay.
Horry County Schools is looking at a nearly $1.2 billion budget for the 2024-2025 school year. It’s about a $120 million increase from the 2023-2024 budget.
John Gardner, the district’s chief financial officer presented superintendent Rick Maxey’s comprehensive budget for the upcoming school year.
The proposed budget includes a $1,000 pay increase for teachers, 3% increase for non-teaching employees, and a 2% increase for eligible employees. The district said teachers who have worked for more than one year would be eligible for the 2% increase.
School board member Debbie Edmonds questioned the proposed increase.
“We’re proposing a $4500 raise for non-teaching professionals and $1000 for teachers,” Edmonds said. “Is that correct? If it’s based upon those numbers, that would be correct,” Gardner replied.
Other board members like Shanda Allen asked staff if they could create budget scenarios to increase teacher salaries by $1,500 or $2,000.
Howard Barnard said if they could find the extra money.
“I mean, as we’ve seen every dollar counts and if we can find that extra money, we can give our teachers a pay raise.” Barnard said.
Horry County Schools spokesperson, Lisa Bourcier, said staff will work on those scenarios to bring back to the board.
“With the other salary grade increases and degrees based on degrees of teachers, we know that we’re pretty competitive that way, but we want to make sure that we are staying with the pack, if not surpassing the pack when it comes to being competitive,” Bourcier said.
The budget also includes hiring two safety and security program specialists and additional security guards to conduct all-day searches.
The district also said it’s put in an order for weapons detection systems and expects them to arrive in June. The district plans to hold training for employees before the upcoming school year.
The district said it plans to hold a preliminary approval of the budget on June 10th. Then on June 17th, it will have a public hearing and plans to approve the budget.
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Adrianna Lawrence is a multimedia journalist at News13. Adrianna is originally from Virginia Beach, Virginia, and joined the News13 team in June 2023 after graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University in May 2023. Keep up with Adrianna on Instagram, Facebook, and X, formerly Twitter. You can also read more of her work, here.
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