CENTRE — Faced with a $1.5 million hole in state funding for the upcoming school year, the Board of Education met last week and voted unanimously to enact a “reduction in force” plan that ultimately led to the loss of 15 employees and the closing of the Cherokee County Career and Technology Center campus in Centre. 

Schools across Alabama have seen their allotment of dwindling state sales tax collections reduced, or “prorated,” 23.5 percent by the Alabama Legislature since 2006 and as a result have been forced to whittle away at smaller items in their budgets.  

The last time state-funded schools faced such staggering cuts was during a five-year period from 1956-1961. Slammed with budget cuts of nearly 37 percent, schools across the state were forced to close, including several in Cherokee County. 

Faced with additional funding cuts of $794,000 for the 2011-12 school year, Superintendent Brian Johnson said scant few small budget items remained. 

“Obviously, we had some very difficult decisions to make,” Johnson told The Post.

Johnson laid out the process he and Board members followed in deciding where to save the required amount of operating expenses during a sit-down interview in his office Friday morning.

Johnson said since the closing has been publicized, he has fielded several questions about the possibility of consolidating one or more schools in the county instead of closing the tech center. Based on the coming budget shortfall, Johnson said, he and the Board members were forced to look hard at several far-reaching possibilities.

“One of the things to look at when you talk about saving that much money might very well be closing a community school,” Johnson said. “Right now, however, all the schools in our county are at capacity, so if we close one school and combine it with another, one school can't hold the other; you're looking at building a new facility to house two schools.”

Johnson said he's heard people argue for turning one school exclusively into a high school and another into an elementary school. That idea won't work either, he explained.

“When you do that there is absolutely no savings because you increase your expenditures with additional administration and office staff costs,” he said. “Believe me, we've considered all those things.”

After marking all the community schools off the list of possible closures, the next place Johnson and the Board looked was at the Cherokee County Career and Technology Center (CCCTC).

“There's a statewide trend of career tech going to school-based, as opposed to center-based, facilities,” he said. “One of the main reasons for systems that have already done so is a savings in transportation and facility costs.”

Johnson said that in the case of the CCCTC, savings from reduced administrative staff and busing costs alone came to over a quarter of a million dollars. Another $607,000 was saved by not filling positions when teachers retired, and by non-renewing or terminating non-tenured employees and transferring existing tenured employees to fill gaps. Combined with additional cost-saving measures from consolidating bus routes and reductions in office and support staff, the total savings came to $1.55 million.

The Board's July 5 decision to enact the combined measures as part of its reduction in force plan was unanimous, Johnson said. He said the three-day delay in getting information out after enacting the plan – which led to a slew of negative comments on various social media sites once word got out – was his fault because he wanted to deliver the news to all the affected teachers and staffers, in person.

“I wanted to talk to them first, although I know that for whatever reason it got out and there were rumors going around,” Johnson said. “I wanted them to hear it from me instead of reading it in the paper or hearing it on the radio. I'm always going to put the students and the employees first.”

Johnson said one major misconception about closing the CCCTC is the belief that the county's career tech programs have been eliminated. 

“We are going to continue our career tech program, it's just that now the classes will be taught at the local schools,” Johnson said. “Teachers will instruct students at the individual schools instead of the career tech campus.”

Of the 11 programs taught last year at CCCTC, four were cut: collision repair, carpentry, cosmetology and art. Johnson said two of the programs were lost through attrition because the teachers retired. The other two were chosen primarily because of seniority and student participation numbers.

Johnson said he and the Board realized there would be limitations to confining the remaining programs to individual campuses, but he said plans are already underway to try and devise creative solutions. The seven programs that survived the cuts were health occupation, auto mechanics, welding, three business-related classes, and the off-site cooperative work program.

“We may have some programs that are taught at one school for a semester and then move to another school for the next semester,” Johnson said. “Also, the gifted program, along with the alternative school program and Career Quest, will all be continued.” 

Each school will have at least one career tech class available at its campus, and Cherokee County High School and Sand Rock will each have two. Unfortunately, the full itinerary of classes will no longer be available to every student across the county.

For example, Johnson said, welding will be taught exclusively at Sand Rock, and almost exclusively to students who attend school there.

“One of the major disadvantages of having to close the tech center is that not every class will be available at every school,” Johnson admitted. “But what the Board and I are going to do is, for example, if someone is within a semester or two of completing a course, we are going to work with them to hopefully provide some options. Those decisions will be made on a per-student basis.”

Johnson said other options for extending the reach of the tech program include live streaming audio and video conferencing.

“Based on whether the particular class allows it, it may be that a teacher is holding a class at Spring Garden and we may be able to set it up so that students at other schools can participate,” he said. “We want to be as innovative as we can. We may even look at moving some programs around, from year to year.”

Johnson said he and Board members are open to eventually bringing back as many of the classes as possible, provided sufficient funding from the state is restored at some point down the road.

“We'd love to even add some new programs if we can,” he said. “We've been looking into pre-engineering programs for some time, and possibly combining that with robotics.”

Johnson said machining classes are also on the wish list, along with bringing back one of the cancelled programs.

“We want to bring back cosmetology as soon as we can,” he said. “We had students finishing that program who were actually prepared to take state certification tests when they completed the program and entered the workforce. As soon as money allows, we definitely want that program back.”

Johnson said he and the Board are sensitive to the possibility that eliminating programs could cause a rise in the county's student drop-out rate, but he's hopeful that the opposite might actually prove true.

“We've had students who have been unable to attend career tech classes because they are in athletics or on advanced diploma and their schedules have not allowed it. We hope that by having the career tech classes back in the schools, possibly, the numbers could even increase,” Johnson said. “Other systems that have gone to school-based tech programs have seen their attendance numbers rise.”

Johnson said he and the Board have also fielded questions about the wisdom of closing the CCCTC instead of cutting student programs, such as athletics. Johnson said anyone concerned about drop-out rates should realize what a motivator sports can be in a young person's life.

“Athletics is a true at-risk program, because not only does it keep students in school, it gives them the incentive to maintain a C average so they will continue to be eligible to participate,” he said.

Johnson rejected any suggestion that closing the CCCTC was a personal decision for him or Board members based on past differences with a handful of disgruntled teachers and administrators.

“From day one, over the last seven years, I've made decisions based on what is best for our students and our employees,” he said. “There is no personal aspect of these decisions. When you look at the total number of savings we had to achieve, I see no personal aspect of that.”

Johnson reiterated that all the decisions he and the Board had to make were forced on them by the drastically decreased level of funding allotted them by the Legislature.

“It was because of a reduction in state funds that we had this problem,” he said. “The Board and I, in looking at all the ways to fill a $1.5 million gap in our budget, always focused on two things. Number one, what is best for the students; and two, how to save as many jobs as possible. We didn't cut a single job we didn't have to.”