Chuck Hughes
♦The wounds caused by the state budgetary shell game that requires balancing a budget without knowing the weight on the other side of the scale will soon heal – it always does. In the meantime, I urge the assembly to seek a resolution that will make the process less painful in coming years.
Add to this, the need to revisit the series of subparagraphs in NCGS 115C-546.2 and its subsections and clarify their meaning as relates to educational allotments that go to the Board of Education directly or through the County Commissioners. Of major concern are the lottery allocations. A bit less ambiguity and a lot more uncompromised English would go a long way towards building a bridge between many Boards of Education and County Commissioners.
While on the topic, please keep the lottery allocations as they were laid out in 2005: Fifty percent to classrooms and early education, 40 percent to school construction, and 10 percent to scholarships. To strip this out of the budget is a betrayal of your predecessors who sold the bill as an enhanced funding tool for the state school system.
