MACON, Ga. — The second public hearing for the Bibb County School District 2024 Fiscal Budget was a discussion where Chief Financial Officer Sharon Roberts talked about the proposed July 1, 2023 - June 30, 2024 budget.
Roberts told 13WMAZ the total general fund is $250 million. It is higher than last year and state requirements were the reason for the increases.
"We want to focus on student achievement. You'll see in the budget we did add additional school-level positions," Roberts said.
Roberts said 47 more teaching positions will be added. That includes full-time and part-time teaching positions.
"$2,000 for all our certified, 2% for our classified, $1,000 for our custodians, $5.1% for our bus drivers, bus monitors, school nutritionist assistants, and other school nutrition workers," Roberts said.
Heather Barkowitz has two kids in the school district at Rosa Taylor Elementary School. She says she is pleased with what the school is doing and says adding more teachers is a good thing.
"20, 30 kindergarteners at once? They need some help in the classrooms so that will take some pressure off the teachers," Barkowitz said.
Because of the certified teacher pay increase, Roberts said they didn't want to leave out the rest of the workers in the school district.
"We definitely wanted to make sure that we value all of our employees, not just our certified, so the decision was made to also give increases to our classified staff," said Roberts.
Certified staff means teachers who are certified to teach the students in the district. Classified are those who are not certified to teach students. Both of Barkowitz's kids are autistic and on an Individualized Education Program (IEP). She says she hopes the district will create more resources that can help autistic students and parents of autistic kids.
"Sensory rooms where they can take them there and they can kind of de-stress because with autism kids, they get overwhelmed super-easily, especially in a normal setting such as school," Barkowitz said.
While the school system faces some challenges, Roberts says the board is making sure to stay within the budget.
"We're still in a healthy position in 2024, and we're looking forward to making any changes that we need to stay within a healthy fund balance," Roberts said.
Roberts told 13WMAZ the budget is continuously changing and the board will vote on the budget on Thursday.
At this stage, the budget won't determine how much in property taxes you pay and that decision comes after they hear the final tax digest number and set a millage rate next month.