Kingsport Superintendent of Schools Chris Hampton, right, talks about how Kingsport City Schools teacher pay rates compare with other systems from Greeneville eastward during a Board of Mayor and Aldermen work session Monday afternoon.
Kingsport Superintendent of Schools Chris Hampton, right, talks about how Kingsport City Schools teacher pay rates compare with other systems from Greeneville eastward during a Board of Mayor and Aldermen work session Monday afternoon.
KINGSPORT — Kingsport school officials are still wrangling with a draft 2025-26 budget of nearly $100 million that is $2 million out of balance.
The answer is to be smaller employee raises and using some unrestricted fund balance to cover the shortfall, education officials said.
“I suspect we are going to have to dip into the fund balance to fund the budget,†Chief Finance Officer David Frye said near the end of the presentation to the BMA Monday.
Frye said the fund balance is about $8 million. For a roughly $100 million budget, that is more than the Tennessee-required 3% or about $3 million but near the $15 million that Superintendent Chris Hampton said the comptroller of the treasury has said would be better.
The proposal would have about $4 million in additional expenditures but only $2 million in additional revenues, Frye said last month.
WORK SESSION
Hampton, with help from Frye, gave the Board of Mayor and Aldermen an update on the school system and budget during the BMA work session Monday afternoon.
Hampton’s presentation included information on funding decreases from Sullivan County, teacher pay and student achievement and performance. Hampton after the meeting said he’d spent much of the day discussing budgets with Sullivan County and Bristol, Tennessee, school systems officials.
During the meeting, Hampton presented a page indicating that shifting from county property tax revenue to local option sales tax revenue between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 budgets cost the city school system a loss of nearly $3.7 million.
Across all public schools operating in Sullivan County, that loss totaled about $8.4 million.
“We simply lost revenue from that,†Hampton said. “Sullivan County and Bristol have similar budget challenges this year.â€
1% RAISES PLUS STEPS
In Kingsport City Schools, Hampton said the plan is to have step increases plus a 1% cost-of-living raise. He said doing more simply isn’t an option right now. The BMA is set to hear the city Board of Education budget plan next week after the BOE approves it Tuesday, May 13. The BMA is to approve the budget on two readings in June, and it goes into effect July 1.
As for current teacher pay, Hampton said in the region of Greeneville eastward, KCS ranks first in the maximum experience pay for those with a bachelor’s degree, second for the pay for a bachelor’s and no experience and third for a bachelor’s plus 10 years.
For a master’s degree, the first-year pay ranked first, the master’s pay plus 15 years second and the maximum master’s pay first.
Hampton also talked about past and future capital projects and the $11.2 million city contribution to the school system and more than $4.4 million to school system debt.
