Thomasville City Schools could be forced to cut personnel should Governor Bev Perdue’s state budget get passed as is.

At the TCS monthly board meeting Tuesday night, Superintendent Keith Tobin said that the school system is already expecting to lose about $1 million, but Perdue’s plan to cut a key source of funding to the school system could result in job losses.

Tobin said part of Perdue’s budget calls for the removal of the Disadvantaged Student Supplemental Fund (DSSF), a program established in 2004 that gives money to improve the education of at-risk students. TCS is one of the 16 original school systems to receive the money, and removing that funding will cost TCS $500,000, possibly putting jobs in jeopardy.

“That will be a tremendous hit for us,” Tobin said. “We’re hoping that [the cut] will not go through. That’s money we will lose on top of the other money. We have a significant amount of money that we will have to make up if the governor’s budget goes through as written. There will be some compromising going on, but it’s still scary to think that we could lose more than $1 million of additional money in our school system. If that happens, we’re going to have to make some hard choices.”

Tammy Stromko, TCS’ executive director of business, presented her new budget plan based on the past two years that accounts for a $510,000 discretionary cut, losing $400,000 in school improvement funding and an additional $100,000 loss from Reading First funds. Perdue’s budget, however, calls for an additional 3.8 percent cut in discretionary spending, totaling $575,000, cutting assistant principal allotments and at-risk money, eliminating non-instruction support personnel money, equaling $732,000, and paying back furloughs.

“I’m not going to say we’ll cut people,” said Tobin. “I will do everything in my power as a superintendent to avoid cutting people. If that money is taken away from us, it will be hard not to do that. When you look at that kind of money, you only make that up by cutting personnel. I paint that picture because it’s out there. The budget has been proposed and there are some hits in it for education.”

Stromko faced a budget crisis last year but said she managed to handle it because she had the flexibility to do so. Perdue’s proposed budget will remove that flexibility, leaving Stromko little wiggle room.

“One of the reasons why we made it through last year was that the state gave us some flexibility, a lot of flexibility, with our teacher positions,” Stromko said. “If we lose that flexibility with our teacher positions, and it is in the governor’s budget to lose that flexibility, I can’t do what I did this year. We really will be in a pickle if all that happens. That was the way I could make ends meet. If I don’t have that I can’t make ends meet.”

Tobin said he didn’t expect Perdue’s budget to get passed as is and feels some compromises will be made by state legislators. The state budget should be passed by July.

In other news:

• Mike Ingram, TCS’ technology director, presented a restructuring plan for Thomasville Primary School after it failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) last year. The plan, which only goes into effect if TPS doesn’t meet AYP again this year, is a result of sanctions imposed from the No Child Left Behind Act.

• TCS named TPS’ Jim Eldridge and Amanda Davis, Tony Clark from Thomasville Middle School and Thomasville High School’s Cynthia Tobin its monthly VITAL award winners for exemplary service to the school system.

• TCS recognized Robert Gray from Thomasville High School for winning first place in spread sheet applications from the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA).

• Board members approved a new non-renewal or non-reemployment of teachers policy code. The board, upon recommendation of the superintendent, may refuse to renew the contract of a probationary teacher who is not under contract for any cause it deems sufficient, provided the cause is not arbitrary, capricious, discriminatory, or for personal or political reasons. A teacher whose contract is not renewed may request to receive written notice of the reasons for nonrenewal.

Staff Writer Eliot Duke can be reached at 888-3578, or duke@tvilletimes.com.