School Budgets

The school system pitches their budget request to the Hamilton County Commission.

Hamilton county school board gave their presentation to the county commission today regarding their portion of the budget.

News 12's bekah birdsall has a recap.

Covid-19 and the easter tornado have negatively affected the school budget, forcing them to make cuts for this next upcoming school year.

Mayor jim coppinger says budgets are always based on projections and there's no way to know what can happen that year.

"there was no prediction last year when we were doing this budget that there was going to be a covid-19 virus or tornadoes.

That's going to put us with less revenue here in the last quarter for sure."

Brent goldberg, chief business officer for hamilton county schools says cuts include freezing annual teacher pay increases and all non-teacher hiring until june 30th.

"essentially took last year's budget and there were very minimal additions to the budget and a couple of those, you can see at the top of your screen are related to investing more in student technology for elementary schools and also replacing laptops."

The president of hamilton county education association, jeanette omarkhain, said she and other teachers hope as soon as revenue returns, their pay increases will become unfrozen.

"i don't think they made a terrible decision, it wasn't the decision we wanted, but i have to respect that they're making a decision based on a lot of different factors.

Dr. bryan johnson, hamilton county superintendant, says 84 percent of hamilton county schools met or exceeded student growth expectations in the 2018-2019 school year, putting us as the number 2 fastest improving district in tennessee.

"if the schools were given letter grades, in 16'-17' before our arrival, there were 5 schools that would've received an a.

This past school year in 18'-19', we had 32 schools that would've received an a.

That's a 433% increase."

He also says around 1 in 10 highschool students report they have attempted suicide leading to his mental health initiatives.

However, governor lee's proposed budget cuts include cutting a 250 million dollar trust fund for mental health services for students in high risk schools.

They hope to have the budget taken to the commissioner's office by the 27th of this month.

Reporting in chattanooga, i'm bekah birdsall, news 12 now.

Many volunteers around