Beaufort County’s public school leaders will ask the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners for only those funds needed to “preserve and maintain what we have” according to Superintendent Don Phipps.

The school system will ask the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners for $13.4 million to fund its local current expense budget for the 2011-2012 fiscal year, an increase of $233,704, or 1.7 percent over the county appropriation for the current year.

The Beaufort County Board of Education unanimously approved the budget request Friday.

The school board discussed, but took no action on, a $1.5 million capital budget for the 2011-2012 fiscal year, an amount equal to the school’s construction budget for the current fiscal year.

Its members are scheduled to continue their discussion of the school system’s capital budget when they meet on Tuesday.

The school board and the county commissioners are scheduled to meet Monday, May 2, to review the school system’s spending plan.

“We are trying to preserve and maintain what we have,” Phipps told the Washington Daily News in an interview after the meeting. “There are no brand new projects in this budget.”

The spending request includes a projected 5-percent increase in energy costs totaling $152,768; projected increases in retirement and hospitalization insurance costs for employees totaling $74,451, and a projected increase in payments to charter schools due to the increased appropriation from the county totaling $6,485.

The school board chose a more austere spending request over one that would have asked county leaders to help the schools recoup $462,889 in low wealth funds that will be cut from the county’s appropriations next year.

The local school system’s allocation of state funds to low wealth counties will decrease from $1.46 million to $1 million for the 2011-2012 fiscal year, the school board was told, in part due to increased property values in the county and in part due to the tax rate set by the commissioners.

The proposed capital budget includes some 51 construction projects.

Some of the costlier projects in the proposed capital budget include $200,000 for systemwide technology expenditures; $95,000 to replace the gymnasium and lobby roof at Bath Elementary School; $170,000 for installation of a drainage system to prevent standing water around Northeast Elementary School; $95,000 to replace an activity bus, and $63,400 to replace a heating and air conditioning pump system at Southside High School.

Phipps told the Daily News that developing the local budget for the county’s schools is just part of the struggle facing public school leaders this year.

Still yet to be decided is the fate of the school system’s appropriation from the state.

“We are working with every piece of information we can get to be able to plan,” Phipps said.

In 2010-2011, about $39.6 million, or about 57 percent, of the Beaufort County Schools budget came from state funds; about $15.8 million, or about 23 percent, from county funds and about $13 million, or about 19 percent from federal funds. The remaining 1 percent of the budget came from fund balance.

Still up for consideration by local school leaders are cuts that could reach as high $3.87 million to offset potential cuts in state appropriations.

Earlier this week, the Republican leaders in the N.C. House of Representatives proposed an 8.5-percent reduction in spending for the state’s public schools. This proposal included funds only for teacher assistants in kindergarten and first grade for a savings of $259 million, a $59 million cut in school support staff, a $30 million cut in funds for at-risk children and a $25 million cut in funds for school principals and assistant principals.

Local school leaders said Friday that these cuts, if approved, will lead to additional decisions by the board.

Board Chairman Robert Belcher said one example of the questions the school board may face is, “Are teacher assistants valuable enough in the upper grades that we’re willing to spend a lot of local money for them?”

“That’s our conundrum right there and that’s just one of the discussions we’re going to have to have,” he said.

Phipps told the board that he fears the state Senate will propose a budget that cuts public school funds even more than the state House.

To offset these cuts, school officials prepared lists of potential targets for savings including reductions of up to 50 percent in library spending, curriculum projects and equipment purchases; cuts of up to 25 percent in public relations activities, superintendent activities, testing supplies and materials and allotments for school supplies, and flat rate cuts in general maintenance, school board spending and new band instruments, among many others.