More accountability with fewer resources. That’s the overall theme of Beaufort County Schools’ fiscal year 2017-18 budget.

On Wednesday afternoon, school officials met with the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners to present the BCS budget request for the upcoming year. Last year, the county awarded about $14.3 million to the school system.

This year, BCS is looking at a 5.6-percent increase in its 2017-18 budget, citing the need to cover the cost of unfunded mandates from the state level. The requested amount totals $15.37 million.

“Putting a budget together from the school system perspective is a difficult task to do when you don’t know what your income is going to be from the state, from the federal government,” Superintendent Dr. Don Phipps said. “It’s like trying to put a puzzle together. No. 1, without having all the pieces, but also not having the box cover to know what it is that you’re trying to put together.”

Phipps outlined BCS’ budget needs on the local level, as well as the state level to cover new mandates, which include salary increases, increase in health insurance and retirement costs and the effects of class-size reduction.

For estimation purposes, the district allotted for a 5-percent salary increase for teachers, a 10-percent increase in insurance/retirement costs and the need to hire five more teachers to account for smaller class sizes and the subsequent need for more classrooms. Those allotments account for the majority of the proposed budget increase and total more than $684,500.

“We’re doing a lot of information seeking, trying to pull together what we can pull together starting in December,” Phipps told the commissioners. “We want to be responsible and reasonable. We want to be transparent and honest. We want to be clear and concise.”

Phipps said school officials predicted the impending tightening of the budget and set money aside for a fund balance. However, he said the district cannot continue to rely so heavily on this fund balance and has been forced to make cuts. Along with a tighter budget, per-pupil funding from the state has also decreased, as the district’s number of students continues to decline.

“We just keep adding these expectations on these classroom teachers, and yet the state is not providing us with the funds to carry it out,” Board of Education Vice Chair Carolyn Walker said.

Over the past six years, BCS had to cut more than 100 positions — 32 of those were cut just last year, Phipps said. Well over $800,000 was lost as of this year, as close to 400 students have transferred to charter schools, and BCS no longer receives the per-pupil money to fund them. This does not include homeschooling families. Half of this year’s freshman class at the Northeast Regional School of Biotechnology and Agriscience were also from Beaufort County, Phipps reported.

He said BCS needs to focus on maintaining a quality education and alert the public to the opportunities available in public schools to try to draw in families. Part of that mission also plays into the district’s local budget needs.

Local-level needs included an instructional specialist for high school English/language arts ($62,475); funding for College and Career Promise course textbooks ($60,000); and a coaching supplement increase, the first since 1991 ($34,015).

Other capital priorities throughout the district include safety and security needs, two activity buses, work on athletic tracks and purchasing an 8-acre piece of land for a soccer complex at Washington High School, to name several.

“I’d like for everyone to understand, as we sit around the table, it’s a real challenge,” Commissioner Frankie Waters said. “I think we will all try to do what we can to meet the needs.”

Waters said the county accrues about $600,000 from every cent increase of property and vehicle taxes. He added that BCS accounts for about 45 percent of the county budget as of now, and with these requested increases, would then account for more than half.

“One of the major needs of this county is economic growth,” Commissioner Ron Buzzeo said. “Education is a major aspect of our county.”

Phipps thanked the commissioners for their support over the years, and said he would report more exact numbers once the state- and federal-level budgets are in place. The school system is required to submit a local budget to the county by May 15.

“With the funding cuts that we’ve had at the state and federal level, we wouldn’t have been able to accomplish what we’ve done if we would not have had the local support from you all,” Phipps said. “We’re really, truly having to do more and more with less and less.”