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By Lew Gilliland

The Selma Times-Journal

The Selma City Schools Board of Education approved a budget for FY2022 on Tuesday that includes a 4 percent raise for all of the system’s classified employees.

Classified staff members are employees who are not certified by the state. They include the custodians, lunchroom workers and maintenance and operational staff.

“I’m excited that we were able to give our classified staff a 2 percent pay raise, and that’s on top of the 2 percent raise from the state. And it is much deserved,” Selma Superintendent Dr. Avis Williams said.

The board held its second required budget hearing at the Selma High School auditorium, then approved the budget in a called meeting that followed.

The budget covers the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 and ends Sept. 30, 2022. The budget shows the system has experienced another drop in teacher units this year, from 159.77 to 153.9. The system also lost one half of a librarian unit, from 6.5 to 6.0.

The state awards funding for teacher units based on the average enrollment for the 20 days after Labor Day for the previous school year. This is known as “average daily membership. (ADM).”

Selma City Schools saw its ADM drop by 95.2 students last fall.

Williams, however, said this is not a new problem, and the system has enough teachers to cover its student body.

“It is a concern in that it would be great if the city was gaining population instead of losing, but if you look at the historical patterns over the past 20 years, the city has been losing population,” she said. “One thing we’re all dealing with is the teacher shortage, but we were able to fill most of our openings.”

The system’s ADM was 3,361.9 in FY 2018, 2,769.4 in FY 2021 and 2,674.20 in FY 2022.

Units for principals (9.0), assistant principals (2.0), counselors (6.5) and career tech directors (0.75) stayed the same from FY2021 to FY 2022.

Overall, the system has an anticipated beginning balance of $16,284,104.64 and anticipated ending balance of $16,421,034.01. The anticipated beginning balance in the general fund is $3,343,693.60, and the anticipated ending balance is $2,189,706.97.

Budget revenues come from four funding sources: state, federal, local and other.

Total state revenue for FY 2022 is $20,024,182. Federal funding for FY 2022 is $16,426,277.46. Anticipated local revenues are $5,614,133. Other revenue for FY 2022 is $274,443.03, bringing the system total to $42,339,035.49.

Revenue sources by percentage are led by state at 47 percent, federal at 39 percent, local at 13 percent and other at 1 percent.

Total expenditures are budgeted at $42,627,662.12.

The system’s top anticipated expenditure is for instructional services, which is activities dealing with the direct interaction between teachers and students. The total cost comes to $21,041,423.31, or 49 percent of expenditures.

The second biggest expenditure is for instruction support services. The anticipated cost is $7,450,360.95 (17 percent) and covers services or activities to facilitate and enhance instruction, such as student support services, instructional staff support and school administrative services.

“We’re always pleased when we have a clean budget and a clean audit, which we have year over year,” Williams said. “I commend (Chief Schools Financial Officer) Mrs. (Grindal) Harris and her team on a job well-done.”

Williams has served as SCS Superintendent since 2017.