
{"id":18794,"date":"2011-06-09T12:34:03","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T16:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=18794"},"modified":"2011-06-09T15:14:14","modified_gmt":"2011-06-09T19:14:14","slug":"cuts-to-schools-less-than-anticipated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2011\/06\/09\/cuts-to-schools-less-than-anticipated\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuts to schools less than anticipated"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Joshua Lucas<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>Staff Writer<\/em><\/p>\n<p>CHAPEL HILL  \u00e2\u20ac\u201c State budget cuts won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t affect this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s already-approved Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools budget nearly as much as district leaders had worried, officials told school board members last week. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve changed the numbers, and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had a pretty dramatic effect \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a positive effect,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Superintendent Neil Pedersen said.<\/p>\n<p>The final budget passed by the General Assembly last week does not include as many funding cuts as originally proposed and includes money for teaching assistant positions and class-size reduction that some legislators had planned to cut. The budget passed the GOP-controlled legislature with veto-proof majorities.<\/p>\n<p>The total estimated reduction in the state\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s funding now comes to $5.2 million. District officials and the school board have already agreed to reduce current spending by $2.56 million and spend $2.1 million from the district\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fund balance to help cover the gap.<\/p>\n<p>After some additional cuts and adjustments to the budget, including state-recommended reductions in spending on staff development and textbooks, the board was facing a balance of just shy of $164,312 left to be cut, assistant superintendent for support services Todd LoFrese said.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Drastically different than what we were looking at before,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Other state-level revenue cuts and increased costs include cuts to central office costs and an extension of the school year by five days, to 185 days.<\/p>\n<p>The board approved its budget request in April, asking the county for a $59.2 million local budget that assumed funding and tax rates remained consistent with this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s levels.<\/p>\n<p>Board members did express some concerns at the reduction in teacher workdays that would accompany the increase in instructional days, and at the district\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reliance on using the fund balance to cover so large a portion of the budget gap.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This is better, but we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still using money that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only temporary,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d board member Mia Burroughs noted. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a cliff, and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still dealing with the cliff.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>The board probably couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t rely on the fund balance to cover more of the gap, Pederson said, and might want to revisit other spending reductions.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You are pretty much maxed out,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Pedersen said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hardly a rosy picture, but we were prepared for greater reductions.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>State budget cuts won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t affect this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s already-approved CHCC Schools budget nearly as much as district leaders had worried&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18794"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18893,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18794\/revisions\/18893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}