FRANKLIN
The Franklin City School Board plans to reduce its budget for fiscal year 2017-2018 by approximately $350,000. This follows being told by city government officials during a budget work session on Thursday evening that the division’s local funding for the coming fiscal year will likely be the same as what it received last year. According to School Board Chairman Bob Holt, the cuts will likely come from multiple departments, and may include the elimination of two positions.

“We cut $20,000 here and $30,000 there and we ended up with the need to reduce two positions,” Holt said. “We think we can accomplish that through attritions without laying anyone off.”

Attritions, Holt said, refer to not filling a vacated position. Some of the vacated positions include those those currently held by employees who have submitted their resignations effective as of the end of the current academic year.

The school board had initially requested $350,000 in additional local funds from city council during a joint work session with members of council in March to fund the division’s proposed roughly $17 million budget for the coming fiscal year.

That budget would have been 4.97 percent higher than their $16.3 million budget for fiscal year 2016-2017. However, Mayor Frank Rabil said at the end of that meeting, “We don’t have it,” with regards to their funding request, and suggested the board re-examine their proposal.

Holt added that the positions eliminated were not ones the division could easily do without, but that they would make it work.

The school board plans to meet again on May 18 and, by the end of that meeting, hopes to have an official budget request for the coming fiscal year to present to city council.