By Greg Oliver
Courtesy The Journal

goliver@upstatetoday.com

EASLEY — The Pickens County School Board approved the third and final reading of a proposed $128.1 million general fund budget for fiscal year ‘21 last week despite a plea from one trustee to delay the vote until its next meeting.

In making the motion to table, trustee Phillip Bowers argued that waiting until this month’s board meeting would still allow time to approve the new budget prior to it going into effect when the new fiscal year begins July 1. At the same time, Bowers said the district could be in line for additional funds that could, among other things, salvage 17 teaching positions set for elimination through attrition and the planned expansion of 3-year-old and 4-year-old kindergarten class expansions in the Pickens area that would not be funded as previously planned.

“I appreciate all the aggressive planning by administration, but I’m afraid we may be too hasty with cuts,” Bowers said, adding that state revenues were projected to be at $2 billion more in 2020-21 and that school districts, including Pickens, would receive funding from the CARES Act. “If we get some of those monies, we may not have a budget problem. I’m just apprehensive at having to do that this early.”

Bowers also said he was concerned about the budget unnecessarily cutting STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) funding, as well as project-based learning, athletics, band and art.

But superintendent Danny Merck said a step pay increase for teachers, another of Bowers’ suggestions, is a state decision that won’t be made until the legislature meets in September; and that the 17 positions are being eliminated through attrition, such as retirement. The superintendent added that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the way school districts everywhere plan their budgets, not only for the next fiscal year, but “for the following two years.”

“If we don’t have attrition now, we’re going to have serious cuts in the future and then a lot of people are going to lose their jobs and ask why we didn’t plan for it,” Merck said. “Each decision has been discussed in detail. We have more than 2,000 positions, and we’ve cut 17 positions in favor of a rainy day that’s coming in a year from now or two years from now.”

The superintendent added that the state revenue surplus “isn’t there anymore” due to rising unemployment resulting from the pandemic. He said the last economic crisis more than 10 years ago saw the state mandate step increases, but make them voluntary for school districts that didn’t have the money to allocate. The state plans to operate under the current fiscal year budget until at least the fall, and that budget does not include any step increases this time around.