The approval of a budget proposal from Gov. Brian Kemp could cost the Fulton County school district $40 million this year, according to Fulton County Schools (FCS) Superintendent Mike Looney.
In an interview with Rough Draft Atlanta, Looney said that the cost of services provided by the school district has already been rising, listing contributions to teachers’ retirement as a recent example. The State Health Benefit Plan increased the employer’s healthcare contribution for school employees. Kemp’s budget proposal provides that match only for school employees on the state roster. FCS has to contribute for locally funded positions.
“Every aspect of the work that we do as it relates to personnel expenses, as it relates to just turning the lights on in the day, running our busses, operating our lunchrooms, all those things have increased exponentially in the last four or five years,” the superintendent said.
The biggest part of the FCS budget is personnel. Approximately 80 percent of the General Fund budget goes to personnel services and employee benefits. The school district has 6,880 teacher positions on the teacher salary schedule. That does not include paraprofessionals.
“There’s a dwindling supply of people that are going into the field of education, so we’re all competing from a smaller pool of candidates,” Looney said. “And today’s worker is more willing to move and relocate to where the money is, to where they perceive the benefits might be better.”
As the costs go up, the number of students served has dropped. Looney mentioned that enrollment has dropped in school districts across the country, and most school districts reach a tipping point as costs rise and enrollment falls.
Georgia requires school districts to fund free public education. The funding formula sends part of the revenue from within school districts to the state. FCS gets some of the funds back with the rest going to smaller, rural school districts. The funding is enrollment based, so as the student population drops, the state provides less revenue.
At the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year, FCS projected enrollment to be 87,262, according to the FCS website Facts at the Glance page. In 2020-21, Fulton County reportedly enrolled 90,376 students, which was an almost 4 percent drop from the previous school year.
Keeping the school district in good financial shape helps its credit rating. FCS has a AAA credit rating, which allows it to borrow money at lower interest rates. According to Looney, the school district rarely needs loans because it keeps enough in reserves to cover costs until property tax revenue is received. Homestead and other property tax exemptions also reduce funding for the school district.
According to the school district’s Balanced Scorecard page, the average cost in 2025 per student in the district is $12,411. The average for elementary schools is $13,642, for middle schools it is $12,512 and for high schools the average is $12,780.
Two schools that the district is considering closing, Parklane Elementary and Spalding Drive Elementary, have higher per student costs – $19,949 and $17,184 respectively.
Looney said factors like student-teacher ratios can cause smaller schools to have higher costs. The school district policy provides one teacher for every 30 students in fourth and fifth grade. If the school has 31 students in one of those grades, they’d need two teachers.
Teacher allocations for other grades are based on class sizes of 22 for regular kindergarten with a paraprofessional, and 23 students for first through third grades. Sixth through eighth grades have classes with 30 students, and high school sets the class size at 32.
Looney said that educational specifications and standards have also changed, affecting the number and size of classrooms needed.
Looney said that air quality standards and HVAC systems have increased in complexity over the years. Renovating buildings with LED lighting cuts the utility cost in half, but retrofitting older buildings for LED lighting that lack the required electrical infrastructure gets expensive. Looney also said that when he was hired as FCS superintendent, school buses didn’t have air conditioning, but now the district pays for that expense.
Clarification: An earlier version of this story did not state employer contribution increases are set by the Teachers Retirement System and the State Health Benefit Plan.
