The Decatur Public school Board held a work session last night to continue to tackle the upcoming budget and its projected shortfalls. With lagging revenues and missing state payments, the school board is suggesting a number of budget cuts to survive and has not ruled out the possibility of layoffs. Currently the Decatur Education Fund is projected to dip to 2.8 million dollars from 17.9 million two years ago. To address this, the board discussed a total of 3.3 million dollars in cost reductions last night, including a textbook cost deferment of nearly 1 million dollars, holding off replacing a number of non-teaching positions after upcoming retirements and reducing community engagement costs by 50 thousand dollars, and an over 28 thousand reductions in cell phone costs . . .just to name a few. The teachers unions, however, feel more can be cut, including the selling of 2 district owned houses and the elimination of the use of blackberry phones by administrators.
Unions representing teachers and Decatur school workers held a press conference yesterday to reveal their suggested costs savings for the Decatur School District. The suggestion offered by the unions are not new. The district outlined many of the same suggestions last night during their work session. What did vary was the amounts that could be saved. . for example: 100 thousand vs. the 50 thousand dollar reduction suggested by the board in marketing and printing costs.
The board plans more community meetings on the budget at Hope Academy March 25 and 29
th from 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm.
