The push to cut $1.3 million from this year’s budget as well as prepare for more cuts in the upcoming school year was the topic Thursday at the Limestone County Board of Education work session.

Limestone County is dealing with the 2011 budget cycle after Gov. Bob Riley declared 3 percent proration Feb. 28 reducing the system’s allocations from the state by $1.3 million.  The district is also looking at the 2012 budget cycle with the legislative session taking place right now. Carroll said cuts have been estimated at between $4 to $6 million that they have to try to reduce to remain where they are financially.

“We are trying determine what are the things in Limestone County that we can do in order to reduce our budget,” Carroll said, adding they have already reduced for three years due to proration. “We’ve cut and cut and cut and are still being asked to cut more,” he said.

“Everything we do within the school system is a process,” Superintendant Barry Carroll said. The school system has been working on how best to reduce expenditures since December.

According to Carroll, Limestone County has managed its money. The system has about a month and a half of operating expenses in the budget. He said there are 60 school systems in the state that do not even have a month and 12 systems that are broke or headed that way. 

 “We know there are things we have to do locally to address and balance our budget for next year,” he said. 

On Thursday night, business leaders within the community, board members and staff came together to address those cuts.

Carroll said he visited schools within the district and solicited input as to what the system to could do to reduce expenditures. “We received about 400 suggestions,” Carroll said. “We are trying to get the perceptions of what it is we need to do to get to where we need to be.”

Those in attendance divided into different groups with a board member in each group to decide what items on the 400-item list are “must keeps” or considered non-negotiable in order to provide the best education for Limestone County students, those that can be negotiated and those things that Limestone County Schools can reduce or eliminate from the budget.

There were a number of items that those attendance felt were non-negotiable and must remain, such as not combining schools like Tanner High School and East Limestone High School, closing Piney Chapel or eliminating summer school and other programs.

Items that those in attendance felt could be considered further included asking booster clubs to pay for school use, freezing salaries and step raises, eliminating soccer and track supplements at all schools and other ideas.

Items that some considered in the “must-be eliminated” from the budget included ideas such as purchasing solar panels to save energy and new textbooks.

The lists were not set in stone at the Thursday meeting and were offered as items to evaluate in the days to come.

Carroll said during the meeting every group was active and he thanked them for their input. “Everybody is not going to agree on everything,” he said. “We have to look at these things from a lot of different angles. We have to look at whether it is really going to save us money, is it worth doing and how are we going to implement it.”

Carroll said the groups understand a lot of the smaller items aren’t going to save a lot money, but by putting the smaller things together it may help them save in order to get to where they need to be.

“The process is going to help us identify the things we need to take a look at,” he said.  “We are narrowing down to a list we think is workable and we will put some numbers to it.” Carroll called it the Limestone County Expenditure Reduction Plan.

“I don’t think this is the end of the process,” Carroll said.  “There are more steps to get us to where we need to go and we will talk about those later.”

Carroll said there is a process in discussing everything Limestone County School system does. “We try to think about every decision we make and try to put all the numbers on the board and understand the funding for everything we do,” he said. “We don’t make decisions randomly in a school district. It is a grueling process.”

He added its now time to digest the information and think about it, put numbers to it and continue the process in the next few weeks which means more works sessions will be scheduled in the days to come.