From the Governor’s Office
RALEIGH – Gov. Bev Perdue today announced the results of a budget analysis conducted by the North Carolina State Board of Education and Department of Public Instruction that details the cuts ordered by the Senate leadership in their budget proposal.
Early analysis shows that the Rowan-Salisbury schools will be required to cut a total of more than $5.8 million from its budget.
Senate Republicans, who had already sliced into the public schools budget, slashed deeper, forcing local school districts to cut $429 million next year alone.
The Senate’s additional cuts will require counties to eliminate large numbers of teachers, teaching assistants and administrators.
Gov. Perdue’s proposal would fully protect the classroom, protect critical preschool programs like Smart Start and More at Four and secures access to thousands of workforce training programs in the community college and university systems, according to analysis by the Department of Public Instruction and State Board of Education.
If this budget passes, the results will devastate North Carolina’s classrooms, the governor says.
“The proposed budget appears to be a charade,” said Gov. Perdue. “While the Republican leadership claims to protect teaching positions, they are actually forcing local school districts to make substantial layoffs of education personnel to the tune of more than a quarter billion dollars statewide — meaning thousands of teachers and teaching assistants will be cut.
“Instead of taking the responsible course of extending a portion of the sales tax to pay for critical education needs, the Senate seems to have continued to pursue an ideologically driven effort to unnecessarily defund education and other crucial programs,” the governor says.