Chatham School Board Budget Request

Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:57:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: Daniel & Rhonda Sundberg
Subject: Budget Request

The Board of Education has canceled their meeting for Monday May 2nd with the Board of Commissioners. This was to be the meeting where the superintendent would present his 2011-2012 budget request.

I think the BOE needs to make sure all the cuts to central office available to the school are made before they ask the County for more money. We are the 6th highest county in school local spending at present.  On April 11 th we were told by the superintendent that the good news for that night was that we could reduce the amount of cuts needed because of the percentage of retirement benefits required by the state was reduced. This would save the County $311,000.00.

Instead of using this savings to put back the 4 Spanish teachers being cut and adding the 2 more needed to be effective. The first thing Mr. Logan did was add back one of his Central Office staff. This is a clear indication of his priorities and the disregard for the Mandate by the BOE and Commissioners to “make the cuts as far from the classroom as possible.â€

The $ 2,768 ,359.00 proposed budget cut was reduced to $ 2,431 ,173.00 from scenario 9 to scenario 9B and 9C. A difference of $337,186.00. This is close to the amount that was the justification of reconfiguring our K-8 schools into K-5 schools and putting our kids into an inadequate middle school, ( or spending 6-10 million to upgrade it), and disrupting 900 students. It is also arguably more than the actual operational budget savings would have been.

Why did he put that that many parents and community members to that much effort to save our schools? Why did he use this justification of savings to the very end pitting the K-8 parents against the middle schools and K-5 schools? He used the justification that if we kept our K-8 schools the middle schools will be have no choice but to have no band, less PE, less or no art and many teachers would be cut. Mr. Logan did not come to the commissioners then to ask for the $511,000.00 to avoid reconfiguration then and he should not be coming to them now.

He is being pressured to cut central office and is asking for money to avoid that necessity.. I hope all the parents that were put through this hardship will write or call the BOC to let them know we need teachers more than central office.