The Bell County Board of Education approved a tentative 2025-26 budget during a special called meeting last Thursday. Superintendent Brian Crawford and Finance Director Steve Silcox presented proposed cuts that would save over $500,000 in next year’s budget. It was also made clear during the discussion that the board has no plans to close any of the schools in the district.

“As we have talked about at length over the last few meetings, we’re facing some challenges on the funding side. We’ve had a reduction in students and that’s what drives our funding. For this budget year we are facing a loss of 99.54 (in average daily attendance) for the coming year,” Silcox said. “That represents $732,416 less in potential funding — if those kids were in school we would have received that much more money.”

The board had directed Silcox and Crawford to suggest possible cuts to make up that difference.

“Probably the most alarming thing, as you all know, is that we were funded based on the ‘18-’19 school year for several years because of COVID. They put us on a spend-down where last year they funded us on two-thirds of that and this year we got the final one-third,” Crawford said. “From ‘18-19 to our December 1 child count, what our funding is based on for this coming school year, we have 400 less kids now than what we had. I don’t know how you overcome that.”

They shared a list that included the elimination of seven teaching positions across the county, including one rotating position, and the possibility of cutting one preschool position depending on enrollment.

“The good news in this is that even with eliminating those positions we were able to place all of them in open positions within the district except for one, and that one is a return to work retiree,” Crawford said.

To make up for the rotating position, every school will have teachers that rotate through the curriculum.

“The big schools, Yellow Creek and Bell Central, will get two and the smaller schools will each get one. That eliminates one position, we had nine and now we’ll be able to cover it with eight,” Crawford said.

He added that they were looking at cutting six cook positions across the district and the possibility of doing some cross-over bus routes that could reduce the number of bus drivers

Also reduced in the tentative budget is the amount the district spends on dual enrollment students who take classes at Southeast from $180,000 last year to $100,000.

“We were allowing kids to take an unlimited amount of classes,” Crawford said. “Each student can take two free classes on a scholarship. We’ve had 21 kids graduate with an Associate’s Degree. Mrs. Gilliam was a big proponent of having this and it’s a great thing, but when it first started it was funded by a federal grant. Those grants are gone now so our budgets have to pick that up. Our proposal is that students get their two free classes and then the board will pay for four more.”

He said students would have the option of taking more college classes and work towards their Associates, but would be responsible for paying for those additional classes.

“This cuts it in half, which I think is a good compromise,” Crawford said.

Later in the meeting the discussion turned to rumors in the community about possibly closing schools. Frakes is expected to have under 100 students next year, Right Fork around 120 and Page around 150.

Silcox said that if the state was running the district they would recommend closing four schools and having two elementaries, one middle school and the high school to be the most efficient.

“There’s no way I would vote for putting little kids onto a bus for over an hour,” board member Larry Elliott said. “You look at it financially and I can see how a board with different people would be for it.”

“Absolutely the most financially solid thing for our district to do would be to close some schools and consolidate,” Crawford said. “But I don’t think anybody in this room has a palette for that.”

Board chairman Doug Ramsey said the only way he could see something like that is if the board faced making a decision between laying off 20 or more teachers or closing schools.