The Latta School Board unanimously passed a balanced general fund budget of approximately $11,000.000 for school year 2019-20 at its recent June School Trustee meeting.
That budget in turn was presented to the Dillon County Board of Education at its June meeting and was also unanimously approved.
The newly passed budget will be in effect July1, 2019.
The new budget includes the state mandated 4 percent raise for core teachers.
The budget also included a 4 percent raise for all other employees.
While state funds are supposed to pay for the core teacher 4 percent raise, no state funds were provided for the raise for all other employees.
In the budget, the state is also supposed to pay for increases in health benefits that will occur in January of 2020.
The state also mandated that a first year teacher salary would increase from $31,000 to $35,000.
A negative note in the budget was that the state eliminated all previously funded technology monies which has been and continues to be vital to providing necessary technology requirements for testing by the state, internet access for instruction and advancement of programming requiring technology.
Moving forward with maintaining and growing technology services in the district will be a huge challenge without state funding.
