County School Board

Henderson County schools dig deep to cut $1.5M

County commissioners asked all county departments to make a 7.5 percent reduction in their budget requests this year. The reduction would mean a loss of $1.5 million, Finance Director Kerry Shannon said.

Commissioners also told the school district it must find the money to increase salary supplements for teachers, teacher assistants and librarians by 2 percent, and increase the amount in its capital budget for maintenance and facilities by $550,000.

The 2 percent supplement increase will amount to $997,000, Shannon said.

"That's $1.5 million that we have to find that we had not planned for in our original budget," she said, adding that the commissioners are not giving the school system any additional money to accomplish the mandates.

Commissioners adopted a 2011-12 county budget on June 15. The School Board's request to be exempted from the 7.5 percent reduction requirement because of large funding cuts looming at the state level was denied. During a presentation at a School Board meeting last week, Superintendent David Jones rolled out areas where possible reductions could be made.

He and Shannon are working on recommendations to present to the board when the it meets Thursday to discuss the 2011-12 budget. The school board will make decisions at that time to resolve what it is going to do about the local part of its budget.

"We're in the process of evaluating what will have the least negative impact on us," Jones said.

Jones said staff recommendations for covering the $1.5 million cut could come from several areas such as position reductions and adjustments ($468,049); athletics/band ($40,972); miscellaneous items ($696,784); transportation costs ($64,000) and dipping into the district's fund balance in the amount of $316,303.

The options include:

u Eliminating jobs through attrition (not filling positions when employees resign or retire).

u Eliminating the C-STOP Program and reassigning the three-member staff to other positions. (The Community Short Term Opportunity Program allows students who have been suspended from school to continue their studies at Balfour Education Center and return to their regular school when the suspension is over.)

u Transferring one Academically and Intellectually Talented position from being locally funded to being state funded.

u Transferring one Career and Technical position from being locally funded to being state funded.

u Reducing hours of employment from 40 hours per week to 30 hours for the school district's Historic Johnson Farm employee.

Horry County school board meets tonight - Breaking News ...

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