The Beaufort County Board of Commissioners, during its Sept. 9 meeting, unanimously approved $275,000 in capital-outlay expenses for Beaufort County Schools for the first quarter of the current fiscal year.

The board’s approval came after it reviewed the school system’s capital-outlay requests for the entire current fiscal year. For the entire fiscal year, Beaufort County Schools has budgeted $1.5 million for capital-outlay projects, which included major projects such as roof repairs or replacements and equipment purchases.

“The appropriation from the commissioners was $1.1 million. We went back to our board and asked how we needed to pare the list down and what we wanted to take off to get to that number,” Beaufort County Schools Superintendent Don Phipps told the commissioners. “Our board has decided each one of these projects is important enough that they need to be included. We’re not coming back to you to ask for additional money. What they’d like to do is allocate from the capital fund balance the money needed to complete the projects that are on the list, which is just over $390,000.”

Phipps said Beaufort County Schools has the funds to cover the $390,000, with some funds left over to carry over for future capital-outlay expenses.

The school system’s capital-outlay budget includes, but is not limited to, $300,000 for technological upgrades throughout the system, $100,000 for replacing windows at Chocowinity Middle School and $135,000 for roof work at John Cotten Tayloe Elementary School.

In other school system-related business, Commissioner Hood Richardson asked Phipps how the school system disposes of surplus equipment such as a teacher’s desk. Phipps said the school system uses an auction system that’s open to the public to dispose of such items.

“We try to get at least three bids, if possible. … We encourage local folks to submit bids,” Phipps said.