By By BETTY MITCHELL GRAY
betty@wdnweb.com
Staff Writer
North Carolina’s education leaders this week told Beaufort County’s public schools to prepare for at least $3.1 million in cuts — including the loss of some 58 positions — in next year’s budget.
In response to that news, Beaufort County Schools Superintendent Don Phipps told the school board Monday night that, with careful planning, he hopes to meet budget reductions through retirements and attrition rather than job cuts.
After reviewing the state’s budget numbers, the school board tentatively voted to make changes in its policy governing reductions in force for licensed employees.
“I hope we don’t have to implement (the policy), but we want to make sure we have everything in place in case we do,” Phipps told the board.
Board members agreed to consider at their December meeting a hiring freeze that could be instituted at the end of the semester in January 2011.
“We are trying to prepare for this in the right way. We want to keep a positive outlook,” Phipps said in an interview after the meeting, “with the bottom line being student success.”
Statewide, North Carolina could lose more than 5,300 teaching positions and classes would be larger under a proposal for education cuts submitted by the state Department of Public Instruction last week.
The Office of State Budget and Management required government agencies to identify the consequences of budget cuts of 5, 10 and 15 percent in the 2011-2012 fiscal year to help cover a shortfall in the state budget that could amount to as much as $3.5 billion. Education agencies were told to prepare for budget cuts of 5 and 10 percent.
“At a time when everyone seems to believe that education and learning are keys to survival in the global economy, we cannot turn back the clock,” said State Superintendent June Atkinson in a press release announcing the proposed cuts. “We have already reduced non-essential costs. Additional cuts will hit the classroom and hurt teachers and students.”
On Monday, state education leaders released the effects of those cuts on all school districts within the state.
With a 5-percent budget cut, Beaufort County Schools would face the loss of $3.1 million, including funds for 21 classroom teaching positions, four instructional support positions, 33 teacher assistant positions and cuts in funds for assistant principals and career and technical education.
With a 10 percent budget reduction, the county’s public schools would face a cut of $4.5 million, including the loss of 26 classroom teaching positions, four instructional support positions, 61 teacher assistant positions and cuts in funding for assistant principals and career and technical education.
Phipps stressed that some of those budget reductions could be offset by some $1.4 million in jobs-related funds the system previously received but chose not to spend in order to lessen the effects of future cuts.
He estimated that the actual cuts will “fall somewhere between 5 and 10 percent.”
Local education officials will have flexibility to protect teachers and other personnel who have contact with students by making cuts in some other areas of the school system’s budget, Phipps said.
“I told our folks not to be afraid to put anything on the table,” he said.
The cuts proposed by state educators in funding for Beaufort County school personnel do not include proposed statewide cuts in other areas also announced earlier this week.
Those proposals include a 10-percent reduction in funding for classroom materials and supplies, reductions of between 10 and 25 percent for textbooks, the elimination of funding for mentor salaries, cuts of between 5 and 10 percent in funding for academically gifted programs, the elimination of funding for staff development and cuts up to 5 percent in transportation.
The cuts announced this week are in addition to a 0.5 percent to 1 percent pay-back that the state may require of schools in early 2011 and other state agencies from this year’s budget.
Gov. Beverly Perdue has said she does not want to continue the 2009 tax increase that expires at the end of the year when federal stimulus dollars also disappear. The new Republican leadership in the state Legislature also is expected to oppose such a tax increase. Statewide, public education received more than $700 million from the stimulus plan last year.
Some $39.6 million, or 57 percent, of the Beaufort County Schools 2010-2011 revenue came from state appropriations; $15.8 million, or 23 percent, from local appropriations, $13 million, or 19 percent, from federal appropriations; and $817,835, or 1 percent, from fund balance.
The school board voted unanimously to tentatively change its reduction in force policy for licensed personnel to no longer give priority to performance ratings and recommendations and advice from the superintendent in determining which employees to include in a reduction in force.
Instead, no one of five factors — performance, program enrollment, service in extra duty positions and ability to fill such positions, length of service, superintendent recommendations and other beneficial services provided by the employee — will be given priority.
The school board is expected to give final approval to the policy changes in January 2011.