CENTRE — Superintendent Brian Johnson said the lack of a state education budget forced him and the Cherokee County Board of Education to cut 38 employees, including 28 teachers, at a meeting last week.

Johnson said he was out of his office all day the following day visiting the different campuses in the county and delivering the bad news.

“We were forced to non-renew 28 teachers and 10 support personnel,” Johnson said. “Without a budget, we had to do that before the end of the school year or they would be considered rehired.”

By Wednesday morning, both the House of Representatives and state Senate had passed the education budget. Johnson welcomed the news, but said the agreement on spending for the 2011-12 school year doesn't mean he'll be able to rehire all 38 employees.

“Hopefully, by sometime next week, we'll be able to look at the new budget, plug in the numbers, and see what we can do,” Johnson said. “We want to hire back as many of them as we can.”

Contacted again on Friday, Johnson said he and the board members were working on transfer letters for well over a dozen teachers and support staffers.

“We've got nine teachers and ten support personnel who will be performing different duties next year,” Johnson said.

Johnson said it's impossible to know if more transfers will be necessary without knowing exactly what the financial numbers are going to be for the upcoming school year.

“We've done all our pre-planning, but we can't implement any of our plans until we know how much money we will be getting,” Johnson said.

As of press time Friday, Gov. Robert Bentley still had not signed the education budget into law.

As written, the new education budget will spend $5.59 billion from the Education Trust Fund, an increase of $240.7 million (4.5 percent) from this year. The proposed increase in spending will not make up for the loss of around $463 million in one-time federal stimulus money that supplemented trust fund spending this year.

The Legislature's budget would spend from the trust fund an additional $175 million for the foundation program for public kindergarten through 12th grade; $1.04 billion for public universities, an increase of $51 million; and $320 million for the public two-year college system, a decrease of $1.9 million from this year.