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The Franklin City School Board heard a proposal for the school division’s fiscal year 2023 budget March 3 that would put total revenue and disbursements at $22.2 million.

Jeff Ryder, Franklin City Public Schools’ assistant superintendent for finance and federal programs, also presented a separate FY 2023 capital budget for the school system. He noted that the city must provide all capital improvement funds for FCPS, so because of this and because the school division has no debt issuance authority, the FCPS operating budget has no capital-type expenditures included. This is what leads to the presence of separate operating and capital budgets.

To open his FY 2023 operating budget proposal, Ryder explained the revenue and expense assumptions he made to create the budget.

He said the local revenue from the city allocation would be the same as for FY 2022, plus a $200,000 HVAC match, which is a federal grant, and plus $355,163 for a teacher salary scale increase in order to be on par with Suffolk Public Schools.

For FCPS’ Fund 10, this takes the city appropriation from $4.8 million in the FY 2022 budget to $5.4 million for FY 2023.

As for the state revenue assumption, Ryder said, “I have used the governor’s introduced budget with the state’s 934 (average daily membership), which is based on the fall student record collection.”

This puts the state funding in Fund 10 for FY 2023 at $8.8 million.

Ryder said his federal revenue assumption represents his best estimate of grant carryovers and FY 23 allocations.

He lists $6.9 million in federal funding in grants, and he lists $774,411 in federal funding in FCPS’ Nutrition – Fund 8.

For expense assumptions, Ryder said, “I reset all the salary and benefits to be very close to what they were projected year-end results for fiscal year 2022.”

His presentation noted that large one-time items not expected to recur next year were removed, such as the $192,000 Additional Security grant, the $149,000 Hampton Roads Foundation Band grant and the $20,000 Camp Criminal Justice grant.

“And then the operations and maintenance line has been increased ($450,000) to cover anticipated repairs, and the repairs — they’re so numerous that I couldn’t list them all here, quite frankly,” he said.

In Ryder’s FY 2023 proposed budget, total revenues and disbursements are $14.3 million for Fund 10; $884,898 for Nutrition – Fund 8; and $6.9 million for grants only. 

He also lists $71,007 in total revenue for Textbook Fund 9.

This all leads to an overall income statement that lists total revenue and disbursements at $22,178,841 for the FY 2023 budget.

In his FY 2023 capital budget presentation, Ryder listed a variety of projects with different priorities assigned for 2022. 

Priority 1 items included roofing replacements and repairs for Franklin High School and S.P. Morton Elementary School, which Ryder estimates would cost $933,000 in local funds for each school. The other priority 1 item was plumbing repairs and replacement at J.P. King Jr. Middle School, which would cost an estimated $70,000 in local funds.

All of the projects listed would cost a combined $4 million in local funds and $2.6 million in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief III funds available.

Ryder noted that FCPS would be submitting its operating and capital budgets to the city of Franklin on March 14.