Feedback Sought on APS Title II-A Survey

Parent and Community Feedback Sought on Title II-A Survey

Staff Report

Atlanta Public Schools (APS) has announced the availability of the 2012 Title II-A Parent and Community Member Surveys.

Information collected will be used to develop a plan surrounding the utilization of federal Title II-A funds for the 2012-2013 school year.

APS uses Title II-A funds for the recruitment, preparation, training and retention of teachers and principals. Each survey will remain posted until May 28. 

APS has encouraged all community members and parents to complete this important survey and give the district valuable feedback that will be implemented in neighborhood schools.

The parent survey can be found here and the community member survey can be located here.

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In other APS financial news, the Atlanta Board of Education is meeting today, Monday, May 14 to discuss the proposed Fiscal Year 2013 APS budget.

In April, the district announced plans for a $565.8 million budget for the 2012-13 school year. The plan called for about 350 job cuts and two mandated furlough days in an effort to reduce roughly $47 million from the district’s budget.

Here is the most recent financial update presented by APS' chief financial officer Chuck Burbridge:

• The redistricting process has caused a slight delay in the consideration of the FY13 budget, which begins July 1st.
• After we know the final footprint of our schools, we will be able to present a reliable, balanced FY 13 budget to the board.
• We anticipate that the board will adopt the tentative budget no later than May 14th.
• In the meantime, we continue to monitor closely these last few months of our FY12 budget.
• Our expenditures for the current fiscal year are within our budget of $605M.
• Looking ahead, we still expect FY13 to challenging.
• However, we are steadily refining our revenue estimates and identifying cost savings to close our budget gap for next year.
• We are also assessing where we need to make investments to enhance instruction and school operations.
• We now estimate our budget gap to be $47M, down from $66M in an earlier estimate.
• And we continue to conserve our fund balance.
• By the time FY13 begins, we project that our fund balance will be $64M - which is $15M less than the previous FY but higher than our initial forecast.

See here for the FY13 proposed general fund budget. APS will conduct FY13 budget community meetings in the coming days at:

May 15 - Burgess Peterson

May 17 - Garden Hills

May 22 - Slater

May 24 - Peyton Forest

All meeting are scheduled from 6 to 7 p.m.