Fuel costs strain schools' budget

Extra $7.5 million sought from county

DURHAM -- It has been just a month since the Durham school board approved the superintendent's proposed budget, and it already could be outdated.

With rising energy costs, school finance officials told county commissioners Wednesday, the schools might have to find contingency money to cover budget shortfalls if the prices of gasoline and diesel fuel continue to soar.

"When we were putting this budget together a few months ago, I'm not sure any of us anticipated gas would be $4 [a gallon] today," said Hank Hurd, the schools' chief operating officer.

Durham Public Schools officials met with county commissioners in a budget work session to talk through the schools' request for about $7.5 million more than they were allocated last year.

In his proposed budget for next year, County Manager Mike Ruffin recommended that the commissioners provide about $7.2 million of the request.

The inflation for schools accounts for most of the 4 percent increase in the county's $683.6 million general fund budget, the pool of money used to pay for most county services.

The increase would go mostly to maintain the same level of services already being provided to the school district's roughly 33,000 students, plus an additional 630 expected next year.

Much of the proposed increase is aimed at paying for rising energy costs -- including the heating and cooling of two new schools opening next year -- and state-mandated increases in salaries and benefits for teachers and other employees.

The only increase Superintendent Carl Harris requested for widening services was $532,000 for two more language interpreters, four social workers and expansion of an after-school program for middle-schoolers and the state early-childhood program More at Four.

Ruffin recommended that the commissioners support the request to allow 36 additional students into the More at Four program, at a cost of $216,000. He's also working with the Department of Social Services to determine whether the county can afford $137,000 to add four social workers and a supervisor to work in Durham's high schools.

Currently, DPS has 19 social workers in the schools, which include only Hillside and Southern at the high school level. Adding four workers would enable the district's other large high schools to have social workers. The workers have answered a great need, school board Chairwoman Minnie Forte-Brown said, even if results don't always show up in statistics.

"We can provide you with some hard data," Forte-Brown said. "But some of the things a social worker might do -- like having a conversation with a young person who is in the throes of a meltdown -- those things might not actually go into the numbers."