With the new school year just around the corner, the Bryan County Board of Education passed a tentative $55 million budget Thursday night in Black Creek while also voting to keep the millage rate the same.
The schools’ actual budget for the 2015 fiscal year won’t be formally adopted until the school board meets in August, and the BoE passed another spending resolution to keep the schools running in the meantime.
The spending resolutions are not uncommon for a system operating on a fiscal year which runs from July 1 to June 30, and the board passed a similar resolution last month.
Each resolution gives the administration “the authority to spend one 12th of last year’s budget to operate,” BoE
Chairman Eddie Warren said.
“We’ve done this the last couple of years because it gives us more time to work on the budget and tweak it while figure out our enrollment numbers and staffing needs,” he said.
The system currently has nine schools and around 900 employees, and salaries annually make up the lion’s share of Bryan County Schools budget.
The proposed $55 million budget for 2015 will include $47.7 million for salaries and benefits and more than $7 million for operations – which includes everything from maintenance to transportation to technology, Warren said.
The tentative budget is separate from the school system’s capital projects fund. Bryan County Schools is in the process of building two new elementary schools — one on each end of the county — at an estimated cost of about $40 million.
McAllister Elementary in South Bryan and the new Bryan County Elementary School are on schedule and expected to be open when school starts in August, 2015.
Bryan County Schools has grown between 3 and 5 percent annually for more than a decade and enrollment numbers are expected to be between 8,200 and 8,500 when school begins Aug. 4.

New hire
Also Thursday, the BoE approved the hiring of Jason Kornegay as assistant principal at BCHS. Earlier this month, the BoE hired Cari Delatorre as principal.
The pair replace principal Dawn Hadley and assistant principal Rod Bachman, both of whom resigned suddenly in early June. No reason was given for the resignations.
Korenagy was previously a social studies teacher in Bartow County. He has served in a number of leadership positions and has coached both boys and girls soccer and cross country.
He has a degree in finance from the University of Georgia and advanced teaching degrees from Georgia College and State University, Valdosta State and Kennesaw State.
“We are excited about Mr. Kornegay taking on the role of assistant principal in our school system and look forward to the positive impact he will have on Bryan County High School and Bryan County Schools,” Superintendent Dr. Paul Brooksher said.