Murphy – Budget cuts could force the Cherokee County Board of Education to eliminate 16 teaching positions.
Superintendent Jeana Conley said the board plans to hold an emergency meeting to address a budget shortfall, after the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners slashed the school system’s 2022-23 fiscal year appropriation by about $1 million during budget work sessions earlier this month. The commissioners will vote on whether to approve the budget ordinance on June 29.
“It’s really tough,” Conley said. “A hundred percent of that will have to come out of personnel, a million dollars in personnel cuts or some other operating (costs). In total, we’ve been cut more than a million dollars when they passed this budget.”
The cuts came as commissioners looked for ways to reduce a looming property tax increase to 3 cents. They considered significant reductions to a proposed 3-cent cost-of-living adjustment for county employees and also contemplated cutting teachers’ 3-cent supplement during their final budget work session on June 13.
The board reached an agreement during a short intermission near the end of the session and reduced each of those numbers to 2.75 cents while finding a different way to cut costs by reducing the board of education’s annual appropriation by $600,000 instead of the originally proposed $500,000. The school system had asked for a $300,000 increase to cover rising general operating expenses and cost-of-living increases.
The school system lost another $373,506 that was allocated for The Learning Center charter school, which is permanently closing on June 30. Conley said the school system’s allocation from the county stands at $6,698,372 for the 2022-23 fiscal year.
“Over the last few years, the commissioners have funded 24 local teacher positions for us so that we could cover our bases across the county with all of these small schools,” Conley said. “Basically, what they’ve done is cut about 10 teachers.
“What is exasperating that or influencing us even more is that the state’s initial allotment to us showed the cut of six teachers, so we’re looking at having to remove 16 teachers from our personnel pool, or 16 teachers of some kind. It may come in the form of a couple of administrative assistants or a couple of teacher assistants that add up to one teaching position, and some of that we’re going to try to do through attrition, but state law requires that kindergarten through grade 3 have a restricted teacher (to student) ratio.”