County schools fill nine positions
By Staff
Kim West
The Franklin County School system has finished filling nine positions after a special session of the Alabama Legislature approved the state education budget May 31.
The Legislature was called into special session after failing to pass an education budget for the upcoming school year during its May 19 regular session. The 2008-09 state budget will include $6.36 billion for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, compared to $6.73 billion last year.
The Franklin County Board of Education voted not to renew 16 contracts in mid-May as the delayed education budget caused school systems statewide to lay off teachers and staff.
"We've hired back six employees, and we've filled a total of nine of the 16 positions," said Franklin County superintendent Dr. Bill Moss, who will retire Dec. 31. "We won't fill anymore of them because we lost some teacher units because some schools lost students."
Moss said budget increases are sometimes passed by the Legislature without being funded by legislation.
"For three years running we had an 18 percent increase in teaching salaries during the good times but no provisions were made to fund those increases in case of bad times – it's an unfunded mandate," Moss said. "It leaves us with two options because salaries, which take up 85 percent of the budget, aren't allowed to be cut.
We can either lose employees or come up with the revenue."
Another contributing factor to shortfall is the source of funding for the education budget.
In Alabama, gasoline tax revenue, which has increased due to the rise in gas prices, must go into the state's General Fund, while decreasing sales tax revenue funds education.
"When people have to spend more money on gasoline tax, they have less money to spend on items with sales taxes, which makes it difficult for school systems to have enough money for their budgets," Moss said.
Despite the recent cuts, the county system enjoyed a successful 2007-08 school year that included positive Annual Yearly Progress results.
"We currently have no schools on school improvement because all of our schools met their AYP standards," Moss said.
"At one time we had three schools on school improvement, and hopefully we won't have any again next year. Evidently our teachers are doing an excellent job at making sure the students are learning what they ought to learn."
The system has completed a five-year run of major construction projects and now has several smaller projects in the works.
"We've had major building projects over the last five years, and the buildings are in pretty good shape now although maintenance is a year-round consideration," Moss said.
"We have some things on the drawing board, and there a lot of little things we're going to do at different places in the county.
"We're going to put a sewer system in Vina because it's badly needed and has been giving us problems for years. We also need to expand the cafeteria at Tharptown because it was built for 300 students, and we anticipate 600 students this year.
"It probably won't happen until next summer because it can't be done during the school year."
