Another round of layoffs is expected at Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools due to the second significant cut to the district’s budget in two years.
District administrators expect its budget to shrink by several million dollars next school year, Superintendent Neil Pedersen said.
“It is reasonable to assume we will have to make some reductions in positions,” Pedersen said. Staff salaries make up nearly 85 percent of the district’s budget, he said, giving them few other ways to reduce the budget.
He anticipates a $2 million cut to the current budget, which was already downsized $3 million last year.
Pedersen said last year’s cuts started in areas not directly related to educating students. But the extent of the cuts made it necessary to reduce personnel costs by reducing the number of teachers and increasing class sizes, he said.
“This is almost certainly going to mean reductions which will impact students,” School Board Chairman Mike Kelley said.
Both Pedersen and Kelley noted that many ideas from last year’s budget discussion will likely come up again, including cuts to health and electives programs.
“We will look at possibilities that were brought up last year, some of which we did not have to implement,” Pedersen said. “I expect a good number of those will go into effect.”
For the second straight year, the district will not receive money from the state for new textbooks. The decrease in state funding is projected to total $1.1 million.