By April Bethea
abethea@charlotteobserver.com

After two years of cuts, officials from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and Central Piedmont Community College made their case to county commissioners Tuesday for why their agencies should get more money next year.

They say the money will support efforts to boost student achievement and retrain area workers, while returning the systems to the same level of funding received in past years.

Superintendent Peter Gorman warned that the student performance growth the district has experienced in the past may not be mirrored this year. "We have cut and cut and cut and you're going to see the impact of that," Gorman said at a county commissioners meeting focused on the education budgets.

Both CMS and CPCC would get additional money under County Manager Harry Jones' recommended budget, though not as much as they requested.

For example, the school district would receive just over $326 million for operations, an increase of 8.7 percent over this year. The school board, however, has asked for nearly $352.3 million to limit layoffs in the coming year brought on largely by cuts in state money.

Meanwhile, Jones' budget proposal would send $25.4 million to CPCC. That's an increase of about 6.3 percent. The college in recent days upped its request of the county to $29.3 million, about $3 million more than it originally asked for.

Any increases to the college and school system budgets would have to come from county commissioners. On Tuesday, board members asked questions about the requests but did not signal during the meeting how much they'd be able to give either CMS or CPCC.

Chair Jennifer Roberts, a Democrat, said last week she'd like to give more money to both, including a $40 million increase to CMS, partly by keeping the property tax rate flat.

Jones' budget would lower the tax rate by just over a penny, but the county would still bring in more money next year because the tax base grew after the recent revaluation.

Republican commissioners have said they want to lower the tax rate further, but some have not closed the door on more money for schools.

Mecklenburg leaders have long said education is a top priority, and money for CPCC and CMS make up the greatest share of the county budget. The county gives money to support operations at the agencies, as well as construction and other capital projects.

Still, both the community college and school district have lost county money as Mecklenburg made deep cuts to services.

The school board's request for an additional $50 million would restore the county cuts of the past two budgets.

Chair Eric Davis said that even with the cuts, the district has continued to make achievement gains in recent years. "But we simply can't continue to sustain this rate of decline," he said.

CMS' budget includes four tiers of potential cuts for 2011-12. Davis said any additional money CMS receives would go toward preventing cuts at the bottom of the list, including sparing about 400 teacher positions.

CPCC says it would spend new money on increased health insurance and utility costs, along with some maintenance, security and other operating expenses. It also includes money to offer market-rate adjustments and merit raises for CPCC workers.

President Tony Zeiss said the college and its training programs play a critical role in the county's economic recovery, but needs adequate resources to make that happen. "We're starving the solution," he said.

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