If the leaders of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools head into their next budget cycle warning of a budget crisis, will anybody believe them?

That's what some critics were asking a day after the school board gave final approval to a $1.2 billion 2011-12 budget, a spending plan that represents a dramatic shift from the bleak talk of layoffs in May as the school board pressed Mecklenburg commissioners for additional dollars.

The budget actually grew by 1.7 percent over last year and includes nearly 500 additional school-based positions.

The final numbers follow months of warnings that a potential $100 million budget shortfall could force layoffs of some 1,500 employees.

Mecklenburg commissioner Jim Pendergraph said he cut out the Observer's Wednesday article about the new jobs as a reminder of how county leaders "got snookered" by "less than honest" information from CMS.

"I'm going to bring this up at the next budget sessions we have with CMS," he said. "They're going to have a hard time convincing me of anything at this point."

As they approved their budget Tuesday night, CMS officials said they realize how confusing - and eyebrow-raising - the district's suddenly improved financial picture might appear.

They took pains to point out that the budget still includes about $48 million in cuts; about 320 employees were laid off because of the budget troubles. The district also declined to renew the contracts of an additional 184 educators, largely because of poor performance.

Sheila Shirley, the district's chief financial officer, said state law requires schools to tell teachers by May 15 if their contracts won't be renewed. That pushes CMS' budget process up earlier in the year than the state or the county, which supply about 85 percent of the system's finances.

The timing forces CMS to make "a series of educated guesses" about where its budget numbers will ultimately land, Shirley said.

"This is something school districts around the state have to deal with every year," said Leanne Winner, governmental relations director for the N.C. School Boards Association. "There have been complaints for years."

But there isn't much that can be done, she added, without moving state tax filing deadlines from April 15 to earlier in the year. The state legislature can't compose its budget until it knows how much taxes will be collected.

Often, the General Assembly fails to get its budget in place by the start of the new budget year July 1. Winner said there have been years when schools have opened without a state budget in place.

Someone once proposed a bill that would allow school systems to build their budgets based on the previous year's income totals, she added, but that garnered little support.

CMS planned its budget this spring on the assumption it would get no additional dollars from the county and that the state would impose a 10 percent to 11 percent cut.

The county scenario could have been seen as optimistic, considering commissioners had cut support in recent years. The state projection came from data state officials had given CMS.

The picture brightened on June 7, when county commissioners approved a budget that would give CMS an additional $26 million. A day later, the school board said better-than-expected state projections, coupled with the new county money, would help it save 570 positions.

Pendergraph says school leaders knew about the additional state money before the commissioners voted; school board members have denied that.

On June 15, the state finalized its budget with a 6.8 percent cut for CMS - $27 million less than the district had feared. The state budget also contained money for 114 new K-3 teachers for CMS.

CMS eventually restored about 1,600 school-based positions it had cut from its budget.

Shirley said she understands people might find CMS' budget increase confusing "when all we've talked about is cut, cut, cut."

The head of Mecklenburg Citizens for Public Education, a nonprofit group that supports CMS, said the school system did the best it could with a clunky budgeting process.

"I think there are some in the community that will use this information to take shots at CMS for sandbagging, but I don't think that's fair," Bill Anderson said. "CMS can only operate based on the information they have received."