The Gainesville City School Board adopted their Fiscal Year 2022 budget and a fully rolled-back millage rate Monday night.
As the millage rate was fully rolled back, no public hearings were set, however, Superintendent Jeremy Williams said no one of the public attended the two meetings for the budget.
"Overall, we're just excited to have a budget approved for the next school year without any kind of delay, like we had to have last year due to COVID," said Williams. "Our budget is pretty simple, we have fewer students due to COVID than what we anticipated, so our revenue was down, which also means our expenditures had to be down."
The millage rate was set at 6.395 mills. Williams said they were being strategic in hiring for the new middle school to avoid a spike next year.
"One of the things we did in this budget is we started hiring some personnel for the new middle school," said Williams. "So when you look at GMS West Campus, we'll be hiring about four people total so we're not trying to bring all of those people on in the same year."
Williams said those hires will be at GMS East Campus this year to get to know the community, the students and to work with the teachers and the whole team.
"So instead of doing that all in one year, we're hopeful we'll be able to retain the same millage rate next year," said Williams. "We don't know what's going to happen, but it was a conversation we had previously that if we were going to roll back, the last thing we want to do is go back up in the future."
