Following the bus tour of elementary, middle and the high school Wednesday, Supt. Dr. Larry W. Cartner asked participants to join the school system and board of education in trying to “change the philosophy of funding education” here.

Judy Batten, executive director of the Person County Partnership for Children asked Cartner how the school system here compares to counties of similar size regarding funding. He said he goes by a “benchmark” of 15 systems in North Carolina that are either similar in the number of students or demographically. But, he explained, the fairest way to get a picture of school funding across the state is to look at the Public School Forum’s annual Local Finance Study and the Governor’s Report Card for education.

“We’re $300 to $400 under the average per student,” he said, when those sources are studied.

In the 2007 Local Finance Study, Person County ranked 40th out of 100 counties in ability to pay for education and 45th out of 100 in actual effort to fund public schools.

According to the 20th annual Public School Forum Local Finance Study, Person County is investing $1,158 in local tax dollars per child each year toward operating expenses for public schools here. That is $333 below the state average of $1,491.

Cartner said Wednesday that County Manager Steve Carpenter “has asked commissioners to look at several scenarios” for school funding in the future but, said Cartner, he is unsure what the outcome may be.

“Some commissioners have outright denied the invitation to look at our budget one on one,” he said.

A couple of county commissioners have sat down with school board members in an attempt to better understand the needs, Cartner said, but he does not believe enough understanding has been reached.

“We need $2.2 to $2.5 million right now to get out of the hole,” Cartner said of the school system budget.

He reminded his audience that the school system was short nearly 40 positions from last year. He said his administrators and teachers were working hard to serve the students while being shorthanded.

Class size will suffer, he said, which in turn puts student learning at risk.

Gordon Powell, chairman of the Person County Board of Education said following the tour, in which about 30 members of the community participated, “I am ecstatic about the feel I got from people who haven’t been in the schools recently. So many said they could see good things going on.”

Powell added that he was happy that Commissioner Larry Bowes went on the tour and that Commissioner Larry Yarborough joined the group for lunch at Person High School.

“We invited the county manager and all commissioners,” he said, “because we felt they should share this day-to-day look at the schools.”

He said the tour served as “an eye-opener” for many people who “did not know the day-to-day operations.”

He said he was proud to hear several people comment on the good job that teachers were doing at utilizing the resources available to them.

“They were able to see first-hand” he said of tour participants, that teachers were doing the best they could with the resources they have.

“But there are still so many needs,” Powell said, adding that he thought the tour helped to open eyes to those needs.

He reiterated the statement he made during the April 10 board meeting, in which the school board agreed to send Cartner’s proposed current expense budget of $11.3 million to commissioners.

“This is a needs-based budget,” Powell repeated Wednesday. “It is a budget that’s real, that reflects what is needed to maintain current services.”

Powell said the school board initially looked at a proposed budget of about $13.5 million in operating expenses, after Cartner had asked principals to give him a list of priorities at their schools.

A lot of technology requests were trimmed before the board got into the April 10 meeting, he said, where it sent the proposed $11.3 million request on to commissioners without further cuts; the first time that has happened in years.

Cartner said he commended teachers and principals for being willing to reorganize and prioritize resources in the face of budget shortfalls that have added up over the past few years.

“Now we’re asking commissioners if education is important to them, and if so, let’s fund it,” Cartner said.

Several candidates for county commissioner seats went on the tour and asked questions in a question-and-answer session at the end.

Cartner said he thought that people on the tour, including those candidates, “saw that children don’t learn today like they did 20 years ago.” Explaining that the group saw elementary students preparing their own spreadsheets, Powell said that Person County must develop an education system that allows educators here to teach those 21st Century skills that will be needed for students to succeed in the workplace and life.

Referring to a back-and-forth discussion that has been ongoing between the school board and commissioners for several months, Powell said, “We’re not mad at anyone. We’re in the business of education and we’re trying to get the commissioners to understand our viewpoint. I think we’ve developed a budget that’s very good and that will make progress. We’ve been regressing over the last several years.”

Cartner presented tour participants with detailed information on his budget proposal. Included in that information was a table of county funding since 2000-01. According to Cartner’s “Education Allotment History,” the percentage of county budget allotted to education, which includes funding for Piedmont Community College, capital projects and charter school allotments, was 18.9 percent in 2000 and is 18.9 percent for the current fiscal year.

Current expense funding for Person County Schools, once all deductions were made, according to the superintendent, was $6.2 million in 2000-01; $6.6 million in 2001-02; $6.2 million in 2002-03; $6.3 million in 2003-04; $6.1 million in 2004-05; $6.6 million in 2005-06; $7.1 million in 2006-07; and $7.6 million this year.

The total county budget in 2000 was $39.2 million, and this year’s budget total for the county is $52.8 million.

During that time period, the school board has used its fund balance, or savings, to augment the county budget allocation in order to maintain services to students, Powell and Cartner explained.

That figure has gone from $179,000 in 2000-01 to a high of $824,704 in 2005-06. Over the past eight years, the school board has used $4,105,427 in fund balance to pay for current expenses that were not funded by county commissioners, according to Cartner’s numbers.