News

There’s no money for new textbooks. No cash for supplies at schools and other programs. And there’ll be no funds for students traveling to some events.

That’s the budget crisis the Jackson County School System is facing with its proposed 2010-2011 budget.

For district employees, there’ll be six furlough days next school year, and the elimination of at least four and a half teaching positions, along with a central office position.

Meanwhile, the board of education has directed superintendent Shannon Adams to recommend another round of layoffs in April with a Reduction in Force (RIF) plan.

The first — announced in March 2009 — included the elimination of 38 teaching and non-teaching positions.

“We can’t be all things to all people anymore,” said board chairperson Kathy Wilbanks on Thursday. “We really are going to have to really think about what it is we want to focus on — and then that has to become our priority, and then everything else has to go.”

The Jackson County Board of Education is considering a 2010-2011 budget of $85.9 million — compared to the current budget of $89.2 million. There is no proposal to increase property taxes.

Sales tax revenues to the Jackson County government in 2009 declined 12.6 percent. [Full Story »] 

Jefferson leaders agreed Monday night to seek a state grant to help fund a new library for the town.

Jefferson will seek $2 million through Georgia’s public library capital outlay grants program. If approved, the city would have to fund the remaining $2.8 million.

At a work session held earlier this month, Amy Carlan, branch manager of the Jefferson Public Library, said the library’s public meeting room is too small to host larger children’s events and thousands of books have been taken off limited shelf space.

The existing library, located at the intersection of Old Pendergrass Road and Hoschton Street, is within a short walking distance of four city schools and is 5,000 square feet. The council has discussed swapping the land with the Jefferson Board of Education and building a new 15,000 square foot facility elsewhere in the city.

THE JACKSON County Water and Sewerage Authority will seek a $1 million state grant to fight terrorism. [Full Story »] 

All of the schools in the Jackson, Jefferson and Commerce school systems were ranked in the “clear” category of a statewide test erasure analysis.

The Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA) released its results last week of the spring 2009 Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) erasure analysis.

The analysis focused on the number of wrong answers that had been changed to right answers on individual student answer sheets in reading, English-language arts and mathematics in grades 1-8.

The state identified 74 schools in Georgia in the “severe concern” category as those having 25 percent or more of its classes flagged for wrong-to-right changes. None of those schools are located in the Jackson, Jefferson or Commerce school districts.

The high-number of changes in some school systems, such as Atlanta Public Schools, has shaken the education establishment in the state and could be a major topic of debate in the 2010 state office elections.