The Board of Education voted for a stop gap effort to move into the new fiscal year.
We reported (in an earlier story) about three options crafted by the Director of Schools and staff to adapt the budget for schools to match budget allocations from the County Commission. School Board member Nathan Sanders offered an option four at Thursday night’s meeting of the Board of Education.
So far what we know about the new budget is the high school will lose four teachers, no new text books thru fiscal year 2012, the system’s capital outlay fund will be reduced from $300k to $150k. Art teachers and librarians will stay in place and Short Mountain School will not close. Instructional coaches are gone, no LOE Performance bonuses, removed is a nursing position and one contract bus from the transportation department. Option 4 will also remove all growth positions. Option 4 will reduce less money from the school’s budget than the three offered by Director Curtis. Total savings is less than one-million dollars.
Chairman Javan Fann called the budget, “tight, very tight!” “This will have us going into reserves and this will not look any better a year from now.”
Members of the audience at the board’s workshop earlier this week indicated very strongly that they did not want any of the current elementary schools to close in the county.
The board voted to officially request consideration of two actions from the Cannon County Commission. The first request is to increase the local option sales tax from 1.75 cents per one dollar spent to 2.75 cents, an increase of one cent. The second request is an increase of the wheel tax to increase from $50.25 per vehicle to $75.00. The decision on both requests would be in the hands of the voters of the county. The commission would be responsible to adding the issues to the November 2020 ballot.
Chairman Javan Fann told the audience, I just hope nothing big goes wrong in the new year. If so, he will know as Fann will remain on the board in the new year. Sanders, who introduced the chosen option, is not running for re-election.