During a tense City Schools of Decatur board meeting on Tuesday, the board voted to amend and pass the 2026 fiscal year tentative budget with a half-mil tax increase.
The FY26 tentative budget was proposed after two rounds of drafts. The budget’s expenditures total $110.6 million, down from the FY26 second draft’s $113.8 million, but still $4.6 million above the budget’s anticipated $106 million in revenue.
Board member Hans Utz argued against passing the tentative budget without trying to balance it. Utz would not support “spending $3 million in deficit spending.”
The main budgetary increase from FY25 comes from teaching salaries, which would see teachers receive a minimum 4% increase.
“If we do not countenance a millage increase, and we get no other relief from the state or anywhere else, we are locking ourselves into place to have to do staff reductions,” Utz said. “I am not comfortable with that.”
Utz made it clear that this was the tentative budget, not the final budget, and that they should work to balance the budget now instead of “kicking it down the road. ” They should also receive community feedback about cuts or a millage increase before they seek approval for a final budget in May.
“There’s a couple of options. One, we deficit spend, which I’m going to vote against,” Utz said. “Two, we increase the millage so that we can cover the additional costs that exist in this budget. Or three, we reduce those costs so that we are not incurring them. That’s really the three choices that are in front of us.”
Utz made a motion to add a one-mil tax increase that would bring in $3 million in additional revenue to cover the budget deficit, but that failed 2-3. Board Chair Carmen Sulton and board members James Herndon and Tracy Anderson opposed.
The board made a motion to approve the tentative budget initially proposed, but the motion failed 2-2-1 with Utz and board member Jana Johnson-Davis opposed. Anderson abstained as she wanted more time to consider Utz’s argument.
After deciding that they needed to approve a budget in some form, Utz motioned for a half-mil increase in the tentative budget, which passed in a 4-1 vote with Herndon opposed. The half-mil increase will bring in $1.5 million in additional revenue.
Decaturish will publish a full breakdown of CSD’s budget discussion later this week.
CSD will host a community meeting on April 23 at Westchester Elementary School to hear feedback regarding the budget and hold two public virtual budget hearings on May 8. The amended tentative budget will be presented at next month’s meeting on May 13, when CSD seeks approval of the finalized FY26 budget.
City Schools of Decatur also rescinded two policies regarding equity and CSD’s “Theory of Action” and amended three others to remove references to “equity” during its board meeting.
In CSD’s regular meeting agenda, five “Emergency Policy Adoption Revision” policies will be rescinded or amended following several executive orders from President Donald Trump’s administration. The administration is targeting equity and inclusion policies nationwide.
According to Superintendent Gyimah Whitaker’s report, the board received an order on April 3 to certify compliance by April 10 to continue receiving federal money. This prompted the two-minute emergency board meeting held on April 4, just before spring break, where the board authorized Whitaker to respond to these actions.
During Sulton’s report at the meeting, an audience member called the board “cowards,” which caused Sulton to ask for her to be removed. After she refused, she was carried out of the building by Decatur Police officers.
For the full story about that incident, click here.
In other business, the board:
- Recognized this year’s CSD teachers of the year from each school. Edwin Ellis, a gifted specialist teaching at Fifth Avenue Upper Elementary, received the CSD Teacher of the Year award.
- Awarded $40,000 to Parrish Construction Group for Construction Management at Risk (CMaR) Services for the Early Childhood Learning Center.
- Awarded a $339,113 contract and a $110,121 contract with Alliance Technical Group and School Specialty for weapons detection systems, installation, training and maintenance.
- Approved an agreement to share expenses with the federal E-rate program for a $202,838 contract with PC Solutions for “wireless access point management licenses and network switches” and a $36,360 contract with Zayo for “a parallel internet circuit and wide area network equipment and managed services.”
- Awarded a $161,616 contract to NetPlanner to install additional security cameras at Decatur High School.
- Approved a four-year, $158,046/year contract for a lease-to-own program with Apple Financial Services to refresh the main staff device fleet. The total cost across four years will be $632,186.
This story was provided by WABE content partner Decaturish.
