State: RSS must cut more than $800,000 from budget

By Sarah Nagem

snagem@salisburypost.com

Rowan-Salisbury School System leaders are faced with a new task: They must figure out how to cut more than $800,000 from their budget.

Money shortfalls are forcing state leaders to ask school systems and charter schools to slash their own budgets.

The reduction for each system depends on student enrollment. The Rowan-Salisbury system must cut its budget by $817,637.

"We weren't excited to hear it, but we certainly weren't surprised," Superintendent Dr. Judy Grissom said.

State leaders have sent warnings that the sagging economy and lower-than-expected tax revenues are affecting how much they can dole out to departments.

School systems have a Dec. 19 deadline to tell the state where they will make cuts. Grissom said Rowan-Salisbury leaders are beginning the process of looking at numbers.

"We are given the flexibility to choose what areas we need to revert," she said. "That's the good side, if there is a good side."

At its meeting Monday, the Board of Education will likely talk about what areas of the budget could sustain a hit.

The board will approve final changes next month, Grissom said.

She said school leaders will identify areas in the budget where funds have not been totally depleted in the past. Money could be taken away from those areas without being missed much.

The system could also pull money from the extra cash school leaders set aside for fuel costs, Grissom said.

When the school board approved this year's budget, members set aside about $400,000 to cover extra fuel costs in case the state didn't provide enough transportation money.

School leaders learned their lesson the hard way last school year when they had to shell out their own dollars for diesel when prices soared.

Since then, though, diesel prices have come down.

Grissom said it's still too early to identify areas to slash.

"I'm just not sure until we sit down and look at all the budgets," she said.

But Grissom said school leaders do not want to make cuts that would directly impact classrooms.

"I don't foresee layoffs," she said. "We will do everything we can for the classroom to not be affected."

The budget-cut announcement comes less than a month after the school board agreed to pay a Raleigh research firm $40,000 to study redistricting options in the county.

But unlike many other school systems, Rowan-Salisbury found out last month it doesn't have to return money to the state because of lower-than-expected enrollments.

Cabarrus County Schools learned it has to return about $900,000 because state education leaders overestimated the system's enrollment. Now Cabarrus schools have to slash another $1.1 million from their budget for the latest cutbacks.

Kannapolis City Schools, which has a much lower enrollment than Rowan-Salisbury and Cabarrus, must cut about $201,500 from its budget after this week's announcement.

Here are some other schools and systems affected:

Gray Stone Day School — $10,951

Iredell-Statesville schools — $859,400

Mooresville schools — $221,415

Davie County schools — $264,551

Davidson County schools — $818,029