Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education votes to avoid cuts

They think it’s a long shot, but the members of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education will fight to avoid making almost $900,000 in cuts to the district budget.

The board voted unanimously to request $3.8 million from the Orange County Commissioners during its meeting Thursday. The motion also included language requesting the full budget shortfall be met through the special district tax.

“If the commissioners view this as a dance, we might as well start high rather than starting in the middle,” said board member James Barrett .

The originally proposed budget included provisions for $900,000 in reductions, meaning the district would have only needed $2.8 million from county commissioners.

Board members Mia Burroughs and Jamezetta Bedford expressed reservations about the feasibility of getting $3.8 million from the county because the budget request asks for so much more than the county had planned to give.

“They’ve reported to us the per pupil request of around $175,” Burroughs said. “We’re at a $230 per pupil increase just under the $2.8 level. ”

The board calculated that by asking for the full $3.8 million from the county, that would up per pupil spending by $307 .

Parents begged the commissioners to avoid making the proposed cuts to the district’s gifted program and eliminating more teacher’s assistant positions.

“We have to own that we do in fact have a larger number of gifted learners,” said district parent Tina Coin-Smith . “Please do not create a school system where families of gifted learners feel like they have to leave us.”

The originally proposed budget asked the board to reassign the district’s gifted specialists so each elementary school would have one and each middle school would have five, which would amount to about $540,000 in cuts .

“No doubt, the (gifted) program needs modification but not reduction,” said Kat Wilson, the parent representative for gifted education at Glenwood Elementary .

“It’s clear the cuts are inequitable. Eliminating these positions will result in direct contradiction to the district’s long term mission.”

If the county balks at the $3.8 million number, Barrett said the county commissioners have to understand the district has exhausted its rainy-day funds through careful long-term planning.

“That is a real number with pain behind it, with damage to our mission included in that number already,” he said.

“If that’s the number we’re coming with, that’s the number we absolutely positively have to have and they’re going to have to work with it.”

city@dailytarheel.com