By JIM FAILE

DARLINGTON - The Darlington County Board of Education gave unanimous final approval to a nearly $61 million general operations budget for the fiscal year along with more than $5.3 million in reductions and cost saving measures.

The new budget approved Monday, which takes effect on July 1, also reflects more than $8.2 million already cut from the current year’s budget, which started out at $69.8 million.

Among the cuts aimed at coping with the rising costs and the continued reductions in state funding to the county school district is the elimination of 40 teaching positions at a savings of more than $2.5 million. Those include 13 positions at the elementary school level, 12 at the middle school level and 15 at the high school level.

District officials say they can absorb most or all of those eliminations through attrition as jobs become vacant and are not filled. The district has already cut 100 positions from the current budget, including 60 teaching positions and 40 noncertified positions. Most of those, but not all, were absorbed through attrition, officials said.

The new budget will not raise property taxes in Darlington County. The school district is prohibited from raising taxes for general operations expenses for the coming year under Act 388, the state’s property tax relief act.

Under legislation approved by the S.C. General Assembly, the district is freezing the mandatory step increases in pay for teachers for one additional year of experience in the new budget.

District Comptroller G.C. White said that money, about $867,000, will come from the local salary supplement paid by the district. The freeze will not affect pay for a teacher’s change in credentials such as an advanced academic degree, officials said.

Knight said that savings will eliminate the need for employee furloughs next year. Officials had been considering six furlough days for administrative personnel and three days for teacher, all at a savings of $867,000.

Though he voted for the budget as recommended by the district administration, Hartsville board member Dr. Allen McCutchen, a former elementary school principal, decried freezing the teacher step increase. “I have a tough time with this,” McCutchen said. “I really do because I worked out there with teachers. I just worked with teachers to know that they are going to miss that.”

He said he was concerned about the impact of the freeze on teacher morale.

No district employees will get raises in the new budget, Knight said.

Knight said district officials have worked over recent years to get the district’s teacher salary level to its current level of 10 percent above the minimum state salary schedule through the local supplements, she said.

But Darlington County, she said, is not alone. “I have yet to find a school district that is going to offer a step increase,” she said.

“There are a lot of businesses out there that are not giving any increases at all right now,” Lamar board member Warren Jeffords said.

Knight said the decision on the step increases followed discussions with teachers and with the Darlington County Teacher Forum, which represents district teachers.

McCutchen said he hopes the step increases are restored as soon as the district can once again afford to pay them.

Knight agreed. “Many of these things that are being cut could be and should be reviewed when times are better,” she said.

Another savings will come through the state’s freezing of the Index of Taxpaying Ability, Superintendent of Education Dr. Rainey Knight said. Knight said. The district’s funds will remain at $583,000, at least for now, Knight said. The Legislature will now establish a committee to see how those funds should be distributed to local district based on a district’s ability to pay, she said.

The district could still lose all of that money, depending on what the committee does, Knight said. As a result, she said she is recommending that funding be placed in a separate contingency account until a decision is made.

Darlington board member Tommy Jeffords and Hartsville board member Charles Govan sought unsuccessfully to get some funding for assistant principals, high school guidance counselors and coordinating teachers. But the board rejected that move by a 5-3 vote and stuck with the recommendation from Knight to reduce the number of coordinating teachers’ work days by five, the number of days for high school assistant principals by 25, and the number of days for high school guidance counselors by 20.

Jeffords said the six high school assistant principals affected by that cut were being asked to shoulder too much of the burden of balancing the budget. Officials say cutting the six assistant principals at four high schools from 240 days to 215 will save $54,000.

“These assistant principals are needed or we wouldn’t have hired them,” Jeffords said. He recommended cutting back by 10 days instead.
Govan agreed and sought to restore 10 days for guidance counselors and 2.5 days for coordinating teachers.

But a motion to amend the budget to do all of that drew the votes of only Tommy Jeffords, Govan and Warren Jeffords.

“I think we run a danger, when the administration has already thought this budget out and brings its recommendations when we come in and start cherry picking it,” McCutchen said.

“I’m not cherry picking,” Tommy Jeffords said. “With that amount of money, I don’t see where it’s a big deal. I don’t think six people should carry the biggest burden in this budget. We’re board members. We’re elected to represent our people and our districts, and the people we are cutting are taxpayers.”

The district will also use more than $488,000 in money it receives from the Barnwell Nuclear Waste Dump to help balance the budget.

The budget also reduces the number of work days for JROTC instructors from 240 to 200 days, saving $50,000, and it reduces media specialists to 195 days for a $26,000 savings. It also eliminates bonuses for school bus drivers, which will save another $32,000, officials said.

In addition, it reduces athletic and academic supplements for employees and extracurricular activities by 20 percent for a savings of $148,000. It eliminates health rebates to employees for another $423,000. And it moves more than $1.4 million for technology items and equipment items from the general fund to the debt service fund.