School Board continues discussions about 4 day school week

About 60 people turned out at a school board workshop last night to learn more about a proposal to move to a 4 day school week.         

The school district is looking at a 2.6 million dollars budget shortfall next year and cutting one day out of the school week is one option the school board is considering to balance its budget.

The budget shortfall is being caused by a continuing drop in local property values which lowers the amount of ad valorem taxes the school collects, plus cuts in both state and federal funding for school.

Even if the district does move to a Tuesday through Friday work week, it won’t be enough to balance the budget.

A 4 day school week would save an estimated 540 thousand dollars a year – the rest of the cuts would likely come from pay and benefits cuts for employees and reductions in school programs.

Some of the other options currently on the table is completely ending the employee dental plan, reducing the amount the school system pays for employee health care and possibly even cutting employee salaries by up to 7 percent.

On the program side the board is looking at not paying school bus drivers for athletic trips, limiting the distance a team can travel for an athletic event, and no longer paying for field trips out of the general fund.

Even if the board implements all of the proposed cuts, they would still need to cut another 275 to 450 thousand dollars to balance the budget.

At this point the school board is in the very early stages of considering its options – school board chairman Jimmy Gander said the current discussions are just preliminary before what will likely be an extended process.

And all of the numbers are still very preliminary because the board won’t even know exactly how much it has to cut until the state legislature finishes its budget process in early May.

The school system recommends that people who are opposed to the plan contact their state representatives and let them know what impact the proposed state budget cuts will have.

There is some support for a 4 day school week.

In a recent survey of parents and teachers, about 54 percent said they would support the move, while 26 percent said they would not.

19 percent said they don’t yet know.

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