The Calhoun City Schools system is taking recent state mandated budget cuts head on. The system has already reduced their budget by more than $1.3 million. Don Hood Executive director of Finance for Calhoun City Schools explained that the development of the FY 2010 budget included the rank ordering of potential budget cuts.

“The original FY 2010 budget contained approximately $1.3 million in Initial Tier cuts. Proposed cuts in the Sec-ond Tier were used to cover most of the recent reductions in State funding. We have identified a Third Tier of pro-posed cuts that can be implemented if there are more reductions in State funds. However, with each successive cut, minimizing the impact on classroom instruction becomes increasingly difficult,” he said.

Hood noted that the financial impact of the three-day furloughs on teachers would surface next month. “The ex-act amount of annual payroll to be reduced by the three furlough days will not be known until after the September payroll is computed. Even though the salary reductions have been applied to some of our employees, for the major-ity of our employees their September paycheck will be the first one reduced due to the three furlough days.”

The system continues to make teachers, students and classroom instruction top priority while rising to the chal-lenge of balancing a meager budget.

“The latest cuts required by the state come at the heels of last year’s cuts which included a substantial hit to our administrative personnel at the central office and school levels. We had to endure a reduction in force for several key administrative and clerical positions coupled with changes in the overall work schedule of some of our admin-istrative staff which totaled more than $450,000. We felt that these cuts at the district level were necessary to save teaching positions and not affect classroom instruction,” stated Superintendent Michele Taylor.

“I commend our teachers, administrators and support staff for already wearing many hats and adding several more so that we can continue to operate and meet the needs of our students. We’re willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done so that we can preserve teaching positions and our teachers can focus on our core business of pro-viding engaging learning opportunities for our students,” she said.

According to Hood the system has identified approximately $550,000 in budget cuts to offset the $600,300 of reve-nue cuts required by the State.

“We will monitor expenditures closely to identify how to cover the remaining loss in State funds while minimiz-ing the impact of instruction in the classroom. With the support of the Board of Education all System employees have worked and will continue to work diligently to insure that classroom instruction is not impacted by funding reductions,” Hood said.