The Alexander City Outlook

The Alexander City Board of Education held its second public hearing on the 2012-2013 budget Thursday night.

Chief Financial Officer Rhonda Blythe said she’d made several minor changes to the budget.

One change Blythe made was to update the student count, as the numbers in the previous budget were based on numbers from the end of the 2011-2012 school year.

“We have a huge kindergarten class this time,” Blythe said.

Superintendent Lou Ann Wagoner estimated there are 280 kindergarteners this year.

Blythe also said she asked several schools to recalculate their budgets so the budgets would balance.

“There were some changes (to the school budgets), but that’s because several of them had deficit budgets and we had to get them to go back and do some tweaking (so the budgets would be balanced),” Blythe said.

Blythe also said she shifted $200,000 in excess revenue to another account to save for the anticipated 10 percent cuts during the 2013-2014 school year.

“What we’ve go to do is start looking ahead,” Blythe said. “We know we’re going to lose at least $176,000 (in funding) for the 2014 school year.”

Board President David Sturdivant said he supported the reinstatement of supplements for the golf, tennis and track coaches for the 2012-2013 year.

“I think for the current year going forward, I’d be in favor of including these three supplements in the board budget,” Sturdivant said. “I guess the concern I share is that the supplements have grown. I feel like we need to treat that supplement group more as a group as opposed to … separate sports. I’d like to include them for the year going forward and then potentially address that as a larger group next year.”

Wagoner said she agreed.

“It’s hard to balance those cuts in athletics and academics, even though both are equally important,” Wagoner said. “I just think this year (we should include the supplements) because we have a little extra money, and we told them when the money came back then we’d reinstate (the supplements).”

Board member Steve Robinson said he felt the fairest thing to do would be to reinstate the supplements.

“I agree this needs to be included. At the same time, we’re very cognizant of how we’re spending our money and need to take care of the classroom,” Robinson said. “(The teams are) out there trying to do everything they can to be self-supported. I don’t think it’s right to say we can’t support them while we’re supporting others.”

Board members Fred Norris, Michael Ransaw and Kelly Waldrop were not present.

Sturdivant said members will vote on the budget’s approval at its next meeting Sept. 11.