Contributed
The State Budget is now Law. HB 259 is now Session Law 2023-134.
We have posted our updated Budget Summary documents and Funding Comparison workbook to the website, under What’s New. We have also posted the updated Salary Schedules for your reference.
The salary schedules are being loaded in LICSAL and should be available to everyone by Thursday, Oct 5th.
We will plan on a webinar later next week (likely Friday due to the AIM Conference) to discuss any questions that come up while you review these documents, etc. We will also begin work on the FAQs to support this work and will have those posted and updated as we collect information. If you can funnel the questions thru our generic email sites that will help us coordinate those answers for everyone:
Allotments: Allotments@dpi.nc.gov
Salary: Salary@dpi.nc.gov
Student Accounting: StudentAccounting@dpi.nc.gov
A Couple Items of Note:
All Salary items are retro-active to July 1, 2023.
We are awaiting official information from the State Treasurer’s office related on how to implement the retirement rate, etc. As soon as we have additional clarification, we will provide that to you. For now please reference the September 2023 edition of the Retirement Monitor (Retirement Monitor – September 2023 | My NC Retirement) – below is an excerpt that may be useful.
If the 2023-2025 Budget becomes law after an employer is required to submit contributions, and has a retroactive effective date of July 1, 2023, the Retirement Systems Division (RSD) will create retroactive rate adjustment invoices for any contributions that have already been submitted with respect to employee service rendered on or after July 1, 2023, where it is feasible to do so. Such invoices may be positive (requiring additional contributions) or negative (providing credits against future required contributions), depending on the contribution rates set in the 2023-2025 Budget relative to the rates already paid.
For example, suppose an employer has already reported on employee service for July 2023 and paid retirement contributions of 16.09% of compensation (the recurring-funds retirement component of the 22.94% total contribution in effect as of June 30, 2023), and the 2023-2025 Budget retroactively requires a contribution at the rate of 17.00% for retirement. Where it is feasible to do so, RSD will create a retroactive rate adjustment invoice for the remaining 0.91% of the compensation that the employer had reported for that pay period. Any additional contributions required from a retroactive rate change will be due by the regular contribution deadline for the payroll period during which the invoice is issued.
Depending on the ultimate timing and details of the 2023-2025 Budget, it may be necessary for RSD to implement retroactive changes through processes other than, or in addition to, issuing retroactive rate adjustment invoices. For example, in 2021, a different process was used after the budget law was enacted in November 2021. RSD will provide additional guidance to employers as needed.
Principal Bonuses are stated to be paid in October, however, with the cross-over to the new NCFS system, the budget certification process, etc. we are still determining when we would have the authority to release those funds to the Public Schools. We should have more clarity next week and will provide you further guidance at that time. In the meantime, we will be working with the appropriate areas in NCDPI to obtain the information we need to execute those bonuses per the legislation.
School Health Support Allotment – PRC 006/007: The Chart of Accounts has been updated for PRC 006 and that should be available for everyone in our systems. You will need time to move your staff and expenditures from PRC 007 to PRC 006. The goal is the end of November to get those funds/personnel moved, so we can delete the codes in PRC 007 that no longer apply and update our salary audit system accordingly.
Allotments: The team is working hard to prepare the official Initial Allotments to implement the state budget passed into law today. Our goal is to have those allocations out no later than October 20th. We will then expedite processing the Federal Allocations immediately after the state funds have been processed. The next step after Federal funds have been processed will be the 1st month adjustment for the Charter Schools. We will keep you posted as we progress through our work.
Thank you for your continued support and hard work during this time. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
As a reminder, we are in the cross-over period for the NCFS state system conversion. Cash will not be processed until the week of October 20th.
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