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The Rockbridge County School Board approved a set of budget priorities for FY25 at its March 12 meeting.
The total proposed budget for the upcoming school year is $37,778,592, broken down into six categories: instruction, administration and health, transportation, operations and maintenance, facilities, and technology.
“Those six categories right there are what make up our operating budget,” Superintendent Dr. Phillip Thompson told the Board.
“Those are what we talk about every day when we talk about different lines in our budget, and those are the numbers we would have to have in there,” he said.
Of these, instruction consumes the largest portion of the budget, at a projected 71.2%.
“As you look at instruction there you’re looking at 71.2%. That includes all of our teachers, all of our counselors, all of our administrators, that’s personnel,” Thompson explained. “That’s the reason that number is as large as it is.”
The document approved last week also includes estimates for state and local funding, with state funds expected to make up 47%, or $17,769,514, of the budget revenues. Local funding is estimated at slightly over 48% of the budget revenues, or $18,247,686, which would be $1.5 million over the current year’s budget. Various other funding sources fill out the remaining 5% of the budget.
The balance of state and local funds may change when a final state budget is approved.
“We’re still working with the governor’s budget, as of right now. I would say, generally speaking, we’ve said this all along, we said this to the Board of Supervisors — this is a worst-case scenario,” said Thompson.
“It is more from the locality, primarily because the governor’s budget didn’t give us a whole lot of money from the state.”
“The Senate and the House of Delegates made the pot a little bit larger this year, which is nice,” he said. “Maybe we could potentially ask a little less from the locality as a result.”
When the state budget is finalized, the School Board is expected to submit a revised estimate to the Board of Supervisors.
