HORRY COUNTY, (WBTW) – The Horry County School District is considering several cuts to programs that could mean classroom sizes would stay the same.
School leaders have been considering adding kids to the classrooms; the reason is to save money.
“We cannot just keep adding on programs without cutting something somewhere else,” said Joe Defeo.
Defeo is the Chairman of the Horry County Board of Education. He is the person who made the motion to increase class sizes. He wasn’t alone.
On a meeting held November 30th, six out of seven fellow board and district officials voted to add to classroom sizes.
Increasing class size would mean cutting 41 full time positions; a savings of more than $3 million.
But many opposes the idea; when we posted this story on Facebook many of you told us you did not want to see class sizes grow.
Horry County School Board Member Janice Morreale spoke to us last week and told us she felt the same way.
“I’m very concerned about the children that could fall through the cracks due to an overcrowded classroom,” said Morreale.
But the whole point to adding to classroom sizes is to save money, and Defeo says he would be in favor of other options.
“I’m not in favor of adding kids to the classrooms as long as we can work the cuts,” said Defeo.
He says the problem is the board cannot continue to add programs at its current rate due to the cost.
So an alternative was presented this week.
The finance committee presented the board with $3.1 million worth of cuts that would not affect students. $1.2 million would be used from savings from RBHS funding shift, $1.2 would be used from Reading Coach allocation, and $800,000 would be used from 2016-2017 Reading Coach allocation.
A majority voted in favor of the cuts and against larger classes.
“It’s a little bit of shifting money around and reducing some expenses where we do not need the expense,” said Defeo.
Nothing is decided yet.
Defeo says the full board will discuss adding kids to classrooms next Monday and a final decision will come in January.
