ELIZABETHTON â The Budget Committee of the Carter County Commission spent Tuesday night going through the budget for the Carter County School System. The proposed budget was unanimously approved by the School Board on Thursday night and forwarded to the commission. The general purpose school fund projects expenditures of $43,198,312 for the 2021-2022 fiscal year. That includes a total of $36,839,821 in salaries and $6,358,491 in operations costs.
The three other proposed budgets for the new fiscal year includes expenditures of $3,589,096 on the school cafeteria fund; expenditures of $1,246,968 in the Head Start fund; and $725,000 in the capital projects fund.
County Finance Director Brad Burke said the general purpose school fund tentatively meets the state maintenance of effort requirements for local funding of the schools. The budget also meets another state mandate of maintaining a big enough unassigned fund balance to equal 3% of the yearâs operating expenditures of $3,126,325. At 3%, that means the unassigned fund balance must not go below $1,293,790. The school systemâs fund balance easily surpasses that with a total unassigned fund balance of $11,659,840.