The

impact of House Bill 1187, Gov. Roy Barnes'

education reform package, is starting to be felt

prepare the fiscal year 2001 budget.

"We're

starting to find out what the impact of all this

reform is going to be," Superintendent John

DeCotis told the Fayette County Board of

Education Monday night. "There will be an

increase in the money received from the state,

but a good deal of it is going to increases in

medical costs; it doesn't leave a lot," he

said referring to the jump in insurance costs for

school district employees.

School

finance director Jim Stephens presented an

overview of some of the state-mandated reforms

and the results to be felt locally. He prefaced

his remarks by stating, "No one is

complaining; we don't need to have our hands

slapped... but the reforms present some

challenges," Stephens said.

He

was referring to the governor's censure of the

board that oversees Savannah-Chatham County

Public Schools. Barnes accused that board of

misspending funds that should have been used to

hire teachers in an effort to lower class size,

and questioned why a tax hike would be necessary

to provide the funds to implement his plan when

the money has been funneled into their coffers

all along.

Fayette

County Board of Education Chairman Debbie Condon

called the letter "inappropriate."

"This whole thing is scary," Condon

said. "I'm very concerned."

Stephens

said the state will expand its control over local

funding through a series of "tests"

which are designed to assure that state money

allocated for a particular area, such as

instruction, be used solely for that purpose.

"That should not be a problem; we're doing

that already," Stephens said.

But

monthly state payments that identify each school

within a system and the amount it receives could

pose some difficulties, according to Stephens.

"If we have a maintenance worker, say a

heating and air conditioning specialist, we need

to account for how much money is spent on each

worker in each school," DeCotis explained.

Stephens concurred that this would be the process

if the plan were carried out with the highest

degree of compliance, but at this time, there was

no "test" in the system for this

particular area. "We'll keep it

simple," Stephens said.

Board

member Greg Powers said he was worried that

"older schools are going to suffer"

with less maintenance under the plan, and also

that there would be a "lot of potential for

returning funds back to the state."

"The

state has not worked out all the details

yet," DeCotis said of the education reform

package, which passed the legislature last month.

"One of the issues... is to limit money

moving around... they [state] want the money

spent on what it's designated for... we have

pretty much been doing that. Sometimes you have

to move things around. It cuts down on

flexibility on systems [like Fayette] that have

been meeting previous guidelines," DeCotis

said.

The

board is eyeing a June 1 deadline for having its

new budget ready. The first draft calls for $124

million, about $6.4 million higher than this

year's midyear adjusted budget of 116.3 million.

Stephens attributed the hike to a $2.5 million

increase in health insurance, $2 million for

teacher pay raises, approximately $500,000 in pay

raises for classified employees and additional

funds for new construction.

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