Last week Gordon County Schools Board of Education passed a necessary spending resolution for the month of October. The resolution will allow the district to operate on a twelfth (the equivalent of one month) of last year’s budget while they wait for the county digest to be submitted.

Financial Director Gail Farriba said that it would be close but at present Gordon County Schools is operating from funds in their accounts that they have been able to save and stretch this far.

Board Chair Wanda Davis expressed concern over what is in store for the district with the tax digest yet to be submitted to the state.

“We’re sitting between a rock and a hard place,” she said.

“We are concerned. We don’t want to cause the taxpayers any extra money,” she said. “We understand that there are property assessment issues that need to be addressed. But we also see the need to get the digest to the state. Without an approved tax digest, one way or another, our school system can only continue to function on borrowed money—this costs the tax payers more money in the long run and hurts our credit rating.”

Gordon County Schools Superintendent Bill McCown said that the district is operating off of the tentative 2009-2010 budget while waiting on the approval of the tax digest.

“We cannot continue to operate on a tentative budget,” he said. “It would be beneficial to the school district for the issues surrounding the tax digest to be taken care of as soon as possible.”

“For the first half of the school year we are not receiving the full amount of our QBE (Quality Basic Education) state payments,” McCown explained. “This compounds the issue of the late approval of the digest.”

McCown said that although the fiscal restraints are difficult for adults to deal with, Gordon County Schools are doing everything possible to keep constraints from impacting the students’ education.