By Jasmine Stark
$65,650,898
That is the proposed general funds budget for the coming school year with $31,292,000 coming from local funding, $33,111,698 coming from state, and $50,000 from federal sources. The remainder of the general funds budget will come from Monroe County School reserves. Let’s take a look at how this budget compares to last year and what we can expect to see from those changes.
29 new teachers.
Last year there were many classes in the Monroe County School System that were just too large with some student/teacher ratios for some of the middle school grades reaching 32 to 34 students per teacher. High student/teacher ratios like this can lead to less personalized attention, reduced engagement, and lower academic outcomes for students as well as burnout for teachers. To improve these ratios and set Monroe County Schools up for a successful school year, twenty nine new teachers have been hired in the last year, bringing the average student/teacher ratio back down to 25. A much more manageable number.
With twenty nine additional teachers, the instructional category of the budget has increased $4,664,356.37. We have also seen a roughly 10% increase in the professional development budget amounting to an extra $118,542.83.
There were 27 replacement hires this year with six teachers retiring, fourteen leaving to teach elsewhere, two leaving the profession, and five who had to leave due to their spouse being relocated in their jobs. As of the end of July, Monroe County Schools had three teaching positions open because those teachers were promoted to leadership positions in the district earlier that month. Dr. Finch, Superintendent for Monroe County Schools, seemed confident they would be able to fill the positions stating “Not only is this a place where people want to come live, it’s a place where people want to come teach.”
Cuts in Student Support and Transportation Budgets
The Student Support Budget in General Funds has decreased from last year’s budget by $606,398.92. That’s more than a 27% decrease. It is not unusual for this line item in the budget to change drastically from year to year because it covers instructional initiatives, curriculum changes, and assessment updates which are often different from year to year. For example, last year the Monroe County School Board implemented new literacy initiatives while this year, they are implementing new ELA (English Language) standards. This budget is primarily set by the state budget.
The cut to the transportation budget this year is minor, equating to about a .3% decrease from last year and is likely simply due to the fact that Monroe County Schools doesn’t use last year’s budget when calculating their new one. Dr. Finch says “We build a budget from the ground up. We don’t rubber stamp things and assume we need them every year.” By taking this “Zero Based Approach”, the school board aims to ensure that they are not authorizing a lot of unnecessary materials.
Administration
Both the General Administration, and School Administration budget have increased with an almost 10% increase for the General Admin budget and nearly 19% for the School admin. These increases are largely due to the hiring of new personnel for the College and Career Academy including a CEO, Assistant Principal, and Clerical worker.
School Safety and Security
This year, the general budget includes a brand new category for School Safety and Security. This budget line makes up less than .8% of the total budget and though the category is new, the expenses are not. The majority of the $500,000 in the School Safety and Security budget is made up by the salaries of the SRO’s (School Resource Officers). In the past, this funding has been part of the overall general budget without its own line item.
Expanding and New School Facilities
Contrary to what some may believe, the New High School has very little to no effect on the general budget and consequently, little to no effect on property taxes. New facilities like this New High School come from the ESPLOST, a special purpose local option sales tax levied in Monroe County since 1999. It adds 1% sales tax to items sold in Monroe County with funds going to educational projects such as building new schools, purchasing school buses, band equipment, computer technology, text books, and instructional resources. Since 1999 Monroe County residents have voted to continue the ESPLOST as a way of funding their local schools and this November, this decision will once again be offered to voters in Monroe County. Dr. Finch says that a big reason why so many Monroe County residents support the continuation of the ESPLOST every five years is because it allows Monroe County Residents to share some of our county’s education costs with visitors who buy things as they pass through town on I75.
Why a new high school?
As Monroe County has been growing, so too has the number of children in Monroe County Schools leading to overcrowding of the school buildings. According to Dr. Finch Monroe County Middle School is the most overcrowded with teachers, some of whom, until recently, didn’t have classrooms. Special education co-teachers share their space with other co-teachers during their planning period. This issue has been able to be resolved for the time being by relocating many of the special education teachers two to three to a room.
This overcrowding also necessitates larger class sizes which as discussed earlier has negative effects on student outcomes and teacher stress levels. Finch explains that overcrowding is less severe at the high school because some students don’t spend their whole day there. Some students participate in early enrollment programs or work based learning opportunities half of the school day and are only on the MP campus in the morning or in the afternoon. So why is the Monroe County School Board building a new High School instead of a Middle School?
The new High School plan will not only reduce the effects of overcrowding at Mary Persons’s but instead will create breathing room at all of the Monroe County Schools. This will be accomplished by moving 10th, 11th, and 12th graders into the new High School, 9th graders into the Freshman Campus, 7th and 8th graders into the old Mary Persons’s Campus, and 5th and 6th graders into the Middle School Building. This way each of the elementary schools will be responsible for accommodating one less grade, the Middle School Building and the Old High School Building will each accommodate two grades instead of three and the new Mary Person’s will be able to accommodate a total of 2000 students between the freshman campus and the new two story High School.
Building a new High School instead of a New Middle School also allows Monroe County to take advantage of more state funding. State funding for new schools is determined by the age of the school that is being replaced and Mary Persons’s current campus is the oldest of our current school campuses built in 1983. Because of this, $12-14 million of the cost of the New High School will be provided by the state of Georgia.
There are other cost saving measures that have been put together in this plan including the choice of location. The land that the school will be built on is already owned by Monroe County Schools which means they don’t have to include the cost of acquiring new land, they are also building the school near the current campus which means that they do not need to build all new athletic facilities. The plan for the new school includes an 8 lane track and a cross country trail but has no need for any other athletic facilities.
The Monroe County School Board has begun taking action on this new school by selecting an architect, SP Design Group out of Macon, who has begun designing the building, MCSB has also created a facility plan, completed a wetland study and a site study, and approved resolutions to put a new ESPLOST on the November ballot and sell bonds to fund the construction. If these resolutions are approved in November, construction on the new school is scheduled to begin in March of 2027 and should be finished in 2029 with plans to move students into the new school at the beginning of the 2029-2030 school year.
In total the new high school is planned to cost between 95 and 100 million dollars with 12-14 million of the cost of the school being covered by the state and the remaining cost being covered by low interest bonds that will be paid back from the ESPLOST budget.
School Expansion’s Effect on the General Budget
Use of the ESPLOST on expansion projects doesn’t mean that the need for new schools will have zero effect on property taxes. Dr. Finch explained that we are well overdue in Monroe County for new facilities and expanded facilities and that we also have a lot of deferred maintenance that needs to be taken care of in our schools. He used the example of Hubbard Elementary School which recently had to have their roof replaced because water was coming through the ceilings into the classrooms.
Dr. Finch says that in order to cover these much needed expenses he needs to be able to move some line items that have historically been a part of the ESPLOST budget into the General budget including buses, technology, chrome books, and software licenses which may increase the budget and may require a raise in the millage rate.
When asked how the property tax freeze that reverted property values back to 2024 levels affected the budget, Dr. Finch said that they originally came in under budget even after moving those ESPLOST line items into the general budget when they were going off of the 2025 numbers. However when the assessed values were reset to the 2024 numbers, the line items had to be moved back to the ESPLOST budget and they had to use $1.1 million from their reserve to balance the budget and avoid a millage rate increase.
Though they were able to balance the budget this year, the school system does not have endless savings to draw from and eventually those line items will need to be added to the general budget in order for Monroe County School’s infrastructure to keep up with population growth. This means higher assessed values or higher millage rates.
School Millage Rate
With a current millage rate of 16.212, Monroe County is around the middle of the millage rate range in Georgia which ranges from 5.38 to 23.075 according to the Property Tax Administration Annual Report¹. According to 2024 numbers, Monroe County has the 42nd highest school millage rate out of 159 counties. Comparing that to our rating of 11th best school district in GA², it would seem our School Board has done well to use our school funds efficiently. The Monroe County School System is rated #11th in the state with a 5 star rating from CCRPI, and a 93.1% graduation rate. For comparison, the Average ACGR (Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate) for 2021-2022 in the U.S. was 87% with an 84% Average ACGR in Georgia ³.
Education is a cornerstone of any community and an effective school system has benefits that extend beyond the classroom. Monroe County Schools being rated 11th in Georgia is often cited as the top reason for people to want to move to the area and the outcome of producing intelligent and motivated young adults is beneficial to everyone within the community, not just the students themselves. As a vibrant and growing community, it is essential that we ensure our school infrastructure keeps up with growth and maintains its high standards. There is a cost to that but our Monroe County School Board seems to put a lot of effort into minimizing wasteful spending and maximizing outcomes for our students and for our community.
Sources:
¹Frank M. O’Connell. (2024). Property Tax Administration Annual Report. Georgia Department of Revenue. file://Downloads/PTA_Annual%20Report_2024.01.17%20(1).pdf
²2024 Monroe County Schools rankings – niche. Niche.com. Retrieved 8/5/2025. from https://www.niche.com/k12/d/monroe-county-schools-ga/rankings/
³National Center for Education Statistics. (2024). High School Graduation Rates. Condition of Education. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. Retrieved 8/5/2025, from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/coi.
