Durham Public Schools to gather public input on budget

DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) -- Durham Public Schools are asking for input on the budget during a special meeting being held tonight.

ABC11 spoke with the district's CFO ahead of today's meeting who explained some of the early budget priorities that's compensation as well transportation.

DPS is dealing with a lack of bus drivers and moved to a new bus plan to handle the shortage.

Last year, Durham Public Schools passed its most expensive budget ever, but the district CFO doesn't anticipate a historic budget this year.

DPS is already dealing with a $7 million budget shortfall coming into this budget presentation in addition to concerns about cuts to federal programs that will impact school districts.

Despite all the challenges, the district anticipates not cutting jobs as proposed in other school districts.

"All of the plans that we're looking at, we're trying to structure things in Durham in a way that folks don't have to lose their job, right? And so we've, we've made some very smart, very cautious decisions to set ourselves up to have as much flexibility as we can to maybe, you know, we may have some situations where folks have to take on a different role than what they're doing now," Jeremy Teetor said.

The budget hearing is set for later today at 5:30 p.m. and the district wants to hear from the public.