Murphy – No options appear to be completely off the table as the Cherokee County Board of Education considers ways to cut nearly $1 million from its proposed 2022-23 budget.
The board combed through options including staff cuts, ways to reroute funds and even the possibility of school closures or mergers for the 2022-23 academic year during a specially called meeting Thursday.
“We’re looking for some direction,” Superintendent Jeana Conley told the board. “I’m very proud of our principals. We met this morning, and everybody started doing some introspection of where we could tighten our budgets.”
In Cherokee County Schools, places to tighten the budgets can be few and far between. Seventy-eight percent of the school’s budget is tied up in salary and benefits for teachers and staff spread across 13 campuses. The school system is 53 teaching positions over its state allotment, according to Conley, including more than 29 positions funded from other sources.
Conley also pointed to specific examples of local schools’ limited resources, including the fact that Hiwassee Dam Elementary/Middle School shares one teacher’s aide across eight grades.
“I feel like our list of schools that have everything that the students need is very small, so small that it might be zero,” board member Jeff Tatham said. “So if we’re trying to reduce what the schools offer from what they already offer ...”
“It’s going to be tough,” Conley interjected.
“Tough is not the word,” vice chair Jeff Martin replied. “It’s going to be impossible.”
Chief financial officer Stephanie Haas told the board the school system has about $5.5 million in available ESSER Federal Funding, which came from relief packages in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, those funds are a temporary fix set to expire during the 2023-24 school year and they can only be used in limited ways. Haas added that educators are somewhat “boxed in” when it comes to how to use certain money.
“You have to show that you’re addressing a learning loss,” she said. “You have to show how you’re addressing a response to COVID. There is opportunity for using some of these funds to offset this deficit.”
Thursday’s meeting was called after the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners reduced the board of education’s annual appropriation by $600,000 earlier this month ahead of today’s vote on whether to approve the county’s 2022-23 budget ordinance. The school system had asked commissioners 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 will permanently close effective Thursday. The school system’s allocation from the county stands at $6,698,372 for the 2022-23 fiscal year.
“If you want to look at a total reduction, you’re looking at $1.2 million from where we should have been, but again, (about) $373,000 of it is an expense that did away with on its own,” Haas said.
“I think it’s very unfair to expect this system to cut a million dollars at this late notice,” Chair Arnold Mathews said. “I think what we’re going to see is the potential of some children suffering because of that, and I think that’s very unfair.”
Commissioner Cal Stiles disputes the characterization that the commissioners cut more than $600,000 from the school system’s allocation.
“They said we cut like a million,” Stiles said. “They had requested an additional $300,000 for this next year’s budget, which we did not fund, but we actually only cut them $600,000 in real dollars.
“I just think it’s a little misleading to say we cut them a million dollars. This is a very difficult budget for Cherokee County, and we’ve had to cut everywhere we can to try to hold the (tax) rate increase to a bare minimum.”
Board member James Ellis inquired about a variety of issues, including enforcing district lines, having certain courses taught virtually to multiple schools and putting coaches or other staff members not teaching courses back into classrooms.
Ellis also raised the possibility of moving students at Peachtree Elementary School to Martins Creek Elementary/Middle School due to the age of the building. Board member Joey Shore asked about the possibility of closing or merging multiple schools, which eventually led the group to revisit the possibility of a merger between Hiwassee Dam Elementary/Middle School and Ranger Elementary/Middle School.
Multiple board members, including Ellis, signaled a reluctance to consider school closures or mergers for the 2022-23 school year on such a short timetable, instead preferring to target those possibilities toward the 2023-24 academic year. Tatham and Martin were less inclined to eliminate the option for the coming school year.
“Whatever we do, we’ve got to be so careful not to make our education worse,” Martin said. “If you don’t have the confidence that we can continue the same education, or that we have the potential of getting worse in terms of our ability to educate our kids, I think it still has to be on the table.”
Conley said the school system could be forced to cut courses that are not legally required, such as art and music, plus look at sharing counselors and sharing nurses between campuses. Attrition may help avoid layoffs, as the school system has 14 retirements and resignations that haven’t yet been replaced, including 10 positions that are not considered critical.
“If we are able to make this work somehow, it will be a temporary fix,” she said.
“We do have a little bit of ESSER money left that we can help scab over some of the gaps ... but unless something changes, we’re not going to be able to sustain this model. I think that needs to begin being addressed immediately, so this time next year we can have a solution.”
The board of education will hold another specially called meeting at noon Thursday to finalize year-end budget amendments and personnel.