On Monday night the Aiken County Public School District Board of Education held a special-called meeting to continue conversations around the budget for the 2024-25 school year. A public hearing will be held Tuesday, May 14, where members of the community can give their input on the budget. A second reading of the budget will be held May 28.
Board Chairman Cam Nuessle provided a brief overview of the school budget numbers.
According to Nuessle, the budget has “just barely” been balanced with current funding revenue numbers, but if the Senate version of the budget numbers are used, “we’re at somewhat of a deficit.” The school district’s budget has not yet been adjusted based on the state budget, and final numbers are not available.
Transferring positions
Eleven job positions that were created by Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding in response to the impact of COVID-19 are being transferred to the district’s general fund. In other words, the district will continue to support these job positions using funds from the regular budget, rather than relying on ESSER funding.
These positions include six Information Technology positions, three Curriculum Technology Specialist positions and two Preventative Maintenance positions.
Classroom caps and athletic trainers
The board members discussed two topics as separate but overlapping issues.
Classroom caps — a limit on the number of students allowed in one classroom — is raising concerns about classrooms being split up, potentially leaving students without the guidance of a certified teacher. Additionally, the conversation around the need for athletic trainers was continued at this meeting.
How are these topics related? Reallocating funds to create more teacher positions due to class size caps could impact the district’s ability to hire athletic trainers.
According to Eric Jeffcoat, assistant superintendent of elementary schools, there are 26 vacant teacher positions in district elementary schools being filled by long-term substitute teachers; of these 26, 18 are non-certified teachers.
“If it’s a bad policy then we need to put a change in the policy,” said board member John Bradley in reference to classroom caps. “But not do it just because we need a few dollars for some other program, we do it because we’re hurting kids… that’s where I’m coming from.”
Board member Patricia Hanks said: “For me this is not an athletics or athletic director versus classroom size… my concern is, are we doing the students of Aiken County a disservice simply because we’re trying to come up with a classroom number? Because if that number is not meeting the needs of those students with a certified teacher, that’s the problem.”
“When these kids become less important in their instructional day than those kids that are playing sports… we’re in the wrong business,” said board member Dwight Smith.
Board member Jim Broome said: “I think this is much more complicated than just saying sports versus academics… I do agree with what’s said that we should have smaller classes but we can’t do it efficiently and effectively, we’ve got to serve all of our needs… I totally disagree with saying we’re taking away from academics to help athletics.”
“When we talk about trainers we’re pretty much ridiculed in this district because we don’t have them,” Broome continued. “It looks like we don’t care about our athletes.”
