The Brown County Schools district is staring down the barrel at a $1 million budget cut for the next two school years as student enrollment numbers continue to drop.
“Sadly, this has been a really, really tough situation for us to realize, but we do believe that the recommendations we’ve put forward are getting us in the right direction,” Superintendent Laura Hammack, who was hired as superintendent in the summer of 2016, said last week.
It is the biggest cut the school district has made since fall 2012, when the district closed Nashville Elementary School and converted it into the Brown County Intermediate School for the district’s fifth- and sixth-graders, eliminating about a dozen jobs.
Reducing the number of paraprofessionals across the district, discontinuing the Alternative to Homebound Program and cutting back on overtime pay, which Hammack said reached $92,218 between July 1 and March 30, are among the approved recommendations to address the funding shortfall.
Hammack also said several school employees, including two special education teachers and a handful of paraprofessionals, are planning to leave the school system by the end of this year, and in order to to save money, the district will not replace them.