School board meets to discuss budget, funding issues

The Russellville City School Board met Thursday afternoon at a special called meeting to discuss their financial situation and the questions they had received from Russellville City Council members and Mayor Troy Oliver.

Superintendent Don Cox began the meeting by addressing the current controversy with the city.

“This is not personal,” Cox said. “All school personnel are very passionate about this issue because we feel like this money is our money.”

The reason for the passion behind this debate was highlighted when RCS Chief Finance Officer Lisa Witt gave a report to the school board about their current financial situation and what the school system would be facing during the coming school year.

“We’ve just come through such devastating proration in 2009 and 2010,” Witt said. “It just makes it that much harder when we face more proration this year and now we’ve lost funding from the city that we thought we’d have.”

The money Witt referred to was an estimated $250,000 the school system lost in September due to an additional two percent proration and an estimated $200,000 they did not receive from the city in September that they had expected to get.

Administrative Assistant George Harper also added that the federal funding will be down an estimated $108,000 from last school year to the current school year.

“We are losing so much money at the state and federal levels that we just can’t afford to lose money at the local level, too,” Cox said.

The main reason for the meeting was to address the 25 questions submitted to the school board from the city.

Questions ranged from requests for specific financial information for the system to requests for annual and supplemental income statements for Russellville City School System employees.

While some do not understand why certain questions are being asked, school board president Jerry Groce said the board would make answering the questions a priority.

“We want to have a relationship of trust and respect with the city,” Groce said. “If it takes answering every one of these questions, then I don’t mind us doing that.”

Cox added that the school has nothing to hide.

“I don’t mind being transparent,” Cox said. “We have a great system, and out of 130 school systems in the state, there are only 12 systems that are leaner than we are.”