School Board set for special budget session

The Aiken County Board of Education will hold a special budget work session Tuesday at 7 p.m., and the news from district administrators on preliminary state allocations won't be encouraging.

The S.C. House Ways and Means committee is looking at a per-pupil appropriation of $1,625, said Tray Traxler, the Aiken County School District comptroller.

That's the approximate funding the S.C. General Assembly approved in 1994-95 and is only about $150 more than the per-pupil funding in 1989-90.

The budget issues are emerging at a time when the School Board formally called for a $236 million bond referendum election in May to finance extensive school construction. Board member Ray Fleming said he has heard comments from people suggesting that the bond revenue should be used for teacher salaries and other basic expenses.

"It's a common misunderstanding how the money can be used," Fleming said. "These are different pockets of money, and money from the bond referendum couldn't be used for teachers in the classroom. It's just like that at the Savannah River Site and other businesses, which have separate funds for operations and capital projects."

Although federal stabilization funds could boost the newly proposed state allocation, the school district can still expect to receive substantially less than it did in 2009-10.

The district initially got an allocation of $2,034 per student last year, and federal stabilization funds added $300 to that amount.

"But we got two budget cuts this year just shy of a total of $6 million," Traxler said. "We've lost $270 of the base student cost."

Last year, the district received overall about $7 million in stabilization funds. A large part of that went into a reserve account and was used to absorb the latest round of state budget cuts in the current fiscal year. Traxler said the district will get about $5.4 million in federal stabilization funds in the new fiscal year that begins July 1.

When the state cuts were announced last summer, the School Board reluctantly agreed to impose five furlough days on teachers, five to 10 days on other employees and 10 days for administrators.

State lawmakers have been considering a mandatory five-day furlough for educators in 2009-10. More recently, however, they shifted position and may leave such a decision to the discretion of school districts, as they did last year.

The budget cuts are creating an ongoing struggle, Aiken Superintendent Dr. Beth Everitt said.

"The basic education is continuing to be eroded," she said. "As I visit schools, some classes look larger and some teachers don't have enough planning time to have tailored lesson plans. It's clearly affecting our teachers and our kids."

Last spring, the district did not renew the contracts of about 57 working retirees, although some were hired back later. Other positions were not filled through attrition. It's too soon to talk about specifics for 2009-10, Everitt said.

"Staffing is our biggest ticket item, and we have to look at that," she said. "We always start with attrition. When a position comes open, is that one absolutely required? But the first thing we do is try to keep as many people employed as possible in the jobs they do best."

Contact Rob Novit at rnovit@aikenstandard.com.