The first money cut from the state at the beginning of the school year left the Newberry School District with $627,904 less to work with.

Now two additional storms are brewing on the horizon and look to wipe out the “rainy day” fund council members approved for seasons like this.

If all goes as Chief Financial Officer Susan Dowd predicts, 3 percent of the district’s state Education Finance Act or “EFA money” will be withheld and 2 percent of its Education Improvement Act or “EIA money” will be cut.

The district primarily receives state funds from EFA and EIA structures.

“It looks like we would probably use all the contingency that we have out there budgeted with this next round of cuts,” Dowd said at Monday’s board meeting.

The unknown

With upcoming cuts likely to deflate contingency padding of around $300,000, Superintendent Bennie Bennett said the challenge is considering furloughs for employees.

If furloughs are done late in the school year, the daylong layoffs could weigh heavy on employees’ few remaining paychecks.

If done too soon, “we’d hate to feel like we jumped the gun and were a little bit too early,” Bennett said, not knowing for certain if the district’s financial health needs furlough support.

Board Chairman Don Saylor reminded the board that the furloughs must be on non-instructional days, and that with every teacher furlough, there must be two administrative furloughs.

Bennett said there are three non-instructional days left, one in January, February and one at the end of the year.

On the bright side, Newberry is “probably one of the few districts in the state that has not been through a furlough process yet,” last year or this year, Saylor said.

“We’re fortunate that we’ve got some money in the bank that we can still use that we committed to last year. The last thing we want to do is affect someone’s pay,” he said.

The ’Necessary evil’

Board member Ike Bledsoe said he thinks the district hasn’t spent as much as they originally committed to spend, and that the district did a superb job of bringing down some expenses.

So while recalling last year’s commitment to deter furloughs with fund balance money, he asked that the fund balance be dipped into first.

“I, for one, would be committed to spend that before any furloughs take place,” Bledsoe said.

Board member Lee Attaway agreed to use fund balance to forestall the “necessary evil” of furloughs, but still wanted to make sure enough money was there for operations.

Bennett confirmed Bledsoe’s thought of a possible fund balance remainder.

“When our auditor’s report comes out in December, we’re anticipating not spending as much out of our fund balance as we had approved last year,” Bennett said.

The board expects to know more about possible budget cuts by the first of the year, but to start furloughs if necessary for all three non-instructional days starting in January, board member Gregg Taylor asked about moving January’s board meeting closer to the first of the month.

“If we had to (furlough), we would need to schedule the meeting earlier in January if we had to go that route,” Taylor said.

THE SAVINGS

A one-day teacher furlough coupled with the required two-day administrative furloughs would save the district about $150,000, Dowd said, answering Bledsoe’s question on how much the district could save with the temporary layoffs.

Similarly, two days of teacher furloughs and four days of administrative furloughs would save the district about $300,000, she said.