By JIM FAILE

DARLINGTON - Darlington County School District officials are proposing the elimination of 20 employee positions, 18 of them teaching positions and two district level positions, as they attempt to deal with the anticipated loss of more than $5.1 million in revenue for the coming budget year.

Not all of those employees would lose jobs, however, Superintendent of Education Dr. Rainey Knight said. At least six teachers at the middle school and high school level would be reassigned to other positions, she said. Knight added that with pending retirements and resignations anticipated before the end of the current school year, attrition could take care of the remaining positions.

The elimination of the 20 positions would mean a savings of $1,205,000, according to Knight.

But another 21 to 22 support positions could also be eliminated if, as expected, the district loses $701,602 in technical assistance funds for underperforming schools. That money comes to the district through the Education Improvement Act (EIA) and a cut of that amount would leave the district with $371,520 in technical assistance funding – about a third of the $1,073,122 it would otherwise receive, according to Knight.
And most of those would be real job losses, she said. “Attrition won’t take care of that,” she said.

But many of those jobs would eventually be eliminated anyway, Knight said. As schools that receive technical assistance improve they come out of the technical assistance program and many positions funded through the program are eliminated over time, she said.
But with the technical assistance funding cut so deeply, those jobs could go away a lot sooner than expected, Knight said.

The board will vote on employee contracts on Monday, and contracts will go out to employees on April 15, Knight said.

Knight said state officials are also still considering mandatory employee furloughs to deal with funding shortages at the state level. But while teacher furloughs will save the state money, they will not save the district anything, she said.

District officials already knew they were going to lose $2,732,328 in federal stimulus funding that will run out at the end of the current budget year, which ends June 30.

But during a Darlington County Board of Education budget work session Monday, Knight presented figures indicating that the district stands to lose another $2,387,774 in state funding in the upcoming year on top of that. That includes a $1,096,743 reduction in Education Finance Act (EFA) and general fund money, a $1,105,430 reduction in Education Improvement Act (EIA) funding, and $185,610 in state lottery money.

Those figures are based on a proposed $5.2 billion state budget approved by the S.C. House Ways and Means Committee.

The full House has yet to take up the budget, and Knight said the numbers in her proposal are far from final. The numbers will change as the House and Senate work out their own budgets, with a final proposal going to a conference committee of both houses to iron out differences, she said. Then it goes to the governor.

“We will be monitoring the process. If we see something that looks like it will impact our budget we will certainly bring it to y’alls attention,” Knight said.

Knight is also proposing the use of $1,925,000 from the district’s $19 million general fund balance to help make up for the loss of revenue and another $1,990,000 in “flex” funds – money allocated for particular items but for which the district has flexibility to use elsewhere.

Nearly all of fund balance and flex fund money will go toward salaries, Knight said. Those are also one-time funds, she said.

Knight said the district is fortunate to have a strong fund balance to use to help balance the budget, and she said the district will likely find itself forced to dip into it again next year. “If you didn’t have the fund balance, you’d see another $2 million in personnel gone,” she said.

She and some board members cautioned, however, against relying on the fund balance year after year. “When you spend that money, given the way Act 388 is right now, that money’s not going to be replaceable,” said board Chairman Charles Govan. “If you use it, you lose it.” Act 388 is the state’s property tax relief act.

Protecting the fund balance is important, Govan said, because the district uses money from it to carry it through periods in the year when cash flow is slow but bills still have to be paid and payroll met.

The Ways and Means budget restores about $150 to the state’s base per pupil student cost, putting it up to $1,788, according to district Comptroller G.C. White. But the district will only see $1,405 of that money from the state and will have to make up the difference, White said.

But even with that small per pupil increase, the district will still lose $386,726 in EFA per pupil funding alone, White said.

“It looks like they’re giving us money but then taking it away,” said Lamar board member Warren Jeffords. “They’re playing games again.”

“They give you some here, and they take away there,” Knight said.

Knight said the district is in better shape than many other school districts around the state. District officials have cut almost $19 million from the district’s general fund budget since the fall of 2008 to cope with midyear state funding cuts, she said. Many other districts chose not to cut but to use their fund balances to make up the losses. Now many of those districts have little to fall back on, she said.

Knight said she hopes to have a budget ready for a vote on first reading in time for the board’s May 9 meeting. And depending on when the General Assembly acts on the state budget, second and final reading could come in June, she said.