Limestone County Schools Superintendent Dr. Tom Sisk said the school’s projected 2016 budget may appear exorbitant to some, but there are actually significant savings among the projected $122.1 million in expenditures.

School board members got their first look at the budget proposal Tuesday night, and will vote on the budget at an Aug. 25 meeting.

Sisk said the new budget does not include pay raises for teachers, though he added “salary adjustments” were recently made for several classified positions after a comparative analysis with other districts.

“We pay what the state recommends,” he said. “We’ve had a few isolated pockets in which we were underpaying, but as far as an overall (salary) increase, we don’t have a plan to do that right now. What we are doing is putting in long-range systemic plans for budgeting purposes.”

Sisk said budget expenditures will rise in 2016 because of bonds the system took out for its capital campaign, which includes an expansion at Creekside Elementary School and Limestone Career Technical Center and building of a new school, Sugar Creek Elementary. The capital plan also includes paying debt for renovations at Clements and Ardmore high schools.

The school system’s expenditures typically run about $85 million each year, but the bonds inflated that number an additional $30 million. Sisk said the school system has to pay back $100,000 per year, per million, which equates to a payback of $3 million per year over a 20-year period. Revenues for the next fiscal year are projected at just shy of $85 million.

“It makes it look like we’re spending more than we have, which is true, but it’s spoken for in a bond issue,” he said.

Other budget issues will actually save the school system money over time, Sisk said. The school system is in the midst of an ongoing partnership with Snider Electric to reduce energy costs at each school, but it will force the system to spend money to save money.

“We’ve realized about $400,000 in energy savings, and we’ve got one more month left on this fiscal year,” Sisk said, adding the program is set to be fully implemented by November. “Next year, the savings should be more; about $500,000 to $580,000 in savings each year.”

Maintenance projects

He said the school board would continue to rely on savings from energy conservation and varied streams of revenue to continue maintaining existing facilities. He said the system is not in a financial position to spend $35 million on a new school, but it can continue to invest in existing facilities.

For example, Sisk said the budget received subsidized loans as part of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, or BRAC, which allowed the system to spend about $1.1 million to “repurpose” exiting facilities. He said the school system has also cut its operations budget by about 10 percent, which its using to pay back the bonds.

The system will rely on capital outlay funds received each year by the state to help offset a planned $1.5 million renovation of restroom facilities at East Limestone and Tanner high schools.

Sisk said the system is also in the final stages of closing on the site of the old Belle Mina School, which it sold for $310,000. He said those funds would be used to renovate auxiliary gymnasiums at Tanner, Elkmont and Clements. The total spent at each of the schools equates to about $145,000 and includes new gym floors and bleacher systems. Any portion of the gym renovations that can’t be covered by the Belle Mina School property sale would be offset by TVA-in-lieu-of-tax funds.

“I pointed out to the school board that colleges use the same buildings for hundreds of years, and if you make that investment, those buildings will continue to serve you for many, many years,” he said. “That’s the position we’ve taken.”

The approach also carries over to the replacement of the system’s aging school buses, which Sisk said would be replaced at a rate of about 10 per year at a cost of about $928,000 per year. That contracted price, he said, is good for three years.

The county school system has a debt burden of about $71 million, but Sisk added he’s proud the county hasn’t had to raise taxes to reach the system’s improvement goals. He added more than $1.4 million has been spent over the last two years on renovations efforts.

“The reason our (budget) numbers are inflated is because we’ve done a lot of work,” he said. “We’ve been very good stewards (with taxpayer money) and we’ve been very responsible.”