A $3 million budget cut?

After cutting $2.9 million from this year’s budget — and perhaps more still — school leaders may have to slash an additional $3 million for 2010-2011.

Nothing is official at this point, Madison County Schools Superintendent Mitch McGhee said, as local school boards still await a much-anticipated, finalized state budget.

“This is not set in stone,” he said. “It is conjecture … Nobody knows for sure.”

What state school systems do know is that half of the 2010-2011 ARRA funds (federal money) set aside for education next year have already been exhausted by Gov. Sonny Perdue. Perdue applied them to this year’s shortfall.

“Which makes next year’s budget picture even worse,” McGhee said.

With state revenue struggling (though Georgia posted a one percent increase in March 2010 compared to March 2009), McGhee estimates that Madison County could lose up to $3 million in 2010-2011 in addition to the $2.9 million it lost this year.

That likely means at least five furloughs (Madison County calls them “amended calendar days”) next year, and not re-staffing a portion of the 14 job vacancies it will have after this year.

Other cost cutting measures include consolidating bus routes, further reduction of the central office budget and taking $1 million more from reserves.

“That will be the most we’ve ever hit the reserves,” McGhee said.

Deeper cuts — which are likely — include cutting some supplemental support, combining some classified positions, having elementary schools share certified employees, adding another furlough day and going to larger classroom sizes which would allow the school system to hire less teachers. There’s legislation pending to allow school systems exercise that freedom.

Even at that, those cuts might not be enough to cover the potential $3 million shortfall.

“There are some folks who say even if we did all of that, it still wouldn’t be enough to handle what may be coming down from the state legislature here at the end of the month,” McGhee said.

But the news gets worse.

McGhee said 2011-2012 could be even tougher with no ARRA funds coming to state schools.

That means Georgia would have to generate enough money to equal the ARRA funds lost for schools to avoid even further cuts that year.

With that in mind, McGhee stressed the importance of maintaining a healthy fund balance to protect the system during these lean years.

“We can’t go in and totally deplete our reserves,” McGhee said.

Despite the doom and gloom, McGhee did say Madison County is doing well compared to some of its contemporaries.

“We are in better shape than a lot of systems,” McGhee said. “In fact, we are probably in better shape than most systems, but nobody in public education, financially, is good shape right now.”