State budget plans may impact Aiken County teacher bonus

May 21—Due to differences in budgets between the House and Senate, teachers with the Aiken County Public School District might not see the $4,000 bonus they were expecting.

That news came during the Aiken County Board of Education on May 10 when Aiken County Public School District Superintendent King Laurence told board members that Senate version of the budget has Aiken County receiving $2.5 million less than what the House budget showed.

"That will present some challenges for us and of course, since that's the budget that's kind of on the table right now, we have to plan for that probability," Laurence said. "Of course we still have the House to continue to work on a response to that budget, then we also have the conference committee between the House and the Senate. That's probably going to take place several weeks from now, so for the time being we're going to be looking at the Senate budget for planning purposes."

Tray Traxler, the chief officer of finance for ACPSD, told the school board that budget approved for first reading in April was based on the House version of the budget, which was the only one at the time. However, the Senate budget would have school district guaranteed to receive what they received through 2021-22, but any new money in 2023 would be allocated based on the governor's funding plan.

"For us, that as Mr. Laurence mentioned is just short of a $2.5 million decrease," Traxler said. "Because that's the worst case of these two, that's now what we're playing with as we move forward with the budget."

Traxler added that 90% of the general fund is tied to salaries and fringe benefits, and to offset the $2.5 million and take it out of the first budget means there will be some hits to those areas.

The first budget had increases based on step levels, so those at step 0 would receive $2,000, and then it would increase by $500 until step 4, and step 4 and higher would receive the $4,000. Laurence told board members of a few options the administration are now considering since the Senate has taken the $4,000 off the table.

"So some options that might be available to us might be to use that Senate suggestion, which was $2,000 per scale, but with that it would give room to break up those salary bands, so that would be an option," Laurence said. "Another option that we looked at with the money available would be a 3.25% increase, which is a little less than $2,000 at the entry level, but more than $2,000 at the higher levels of the salary schedule. So looking at it from a percentage standpoint."

Laurence said there was not a cost of living increase for non-teachers in the first reading of the budget. However, with the two scenarios he presented to the school board, the district would be able to fund a cost of living increase for all non-teachers.

"If we went with a $2,000 per cell increase in the teacher salary schedule, we could afford a 2.5% cost of living increase for non-teachers," Laurence said. "If we went with 3.25% for each cell of our teacher schedule, we could do that same 3.25% for all non-teachers as well. So in other words, (for) every employee in the school district we could look at a 3.25% cost of living adjustment. There are probably 10, 20, 30 more variations we could look at, but those were just two that made sense based on the amount of funding in the senate plan."

Traxler said as of May 10 it looked like the conference committee won't be meeting until June, so the school board members approved moving the final reading back until their June 14 meeting. Laurence asked school board members for guidance on which direction they would like the school district to go before the second meeting.

The school district's budget has to be in place by June 30, with Traxler adding the budget can be amended if needed.