Job losses, bigger classes ahead at Monroe County schools

By Andy Graham, Herald-Times

agraham@heraldt.com

Closing schools. Putting a referendum to raise funds on the November ballot. Buyouts and early retirement packages. Online, virtual learning. Cuts to programming. Four-day school weeks.

Those were just some of the possibilities, not certainties, raised as MCCSC staff convened on a dreary Thursday afternoon to discuss circumstances requiring as much as $4.5 million in cuts from the district's general fund - due primarily to a statewide cut of $298 million in K-12 funding implemented by Gov. Mitch Daniels, citing state revenue shortfalls.

Monroe County Community School Corp. administrators clearly took no pleasure in noting that the only seeming certainties, given cuts of that magnitude, are personnel losses and larger class sizes, since salaries and benefits make up 91 percent of the MCCSC general fund.