ALAMANCE COUNTY, N.C(WGHP) — The Alamance-Burlington School System won’t lay off almost 60 people next month after announcing a budget shortfall last week.
This doesn’t mean they may not eventually be laid off. The Alamance County Commissioner’s office announced on Monday that it is providing a $250,000 stopgap to the district.
The potential layoffs came as a shock to employees who fear this budget Band-Aid won’t be enough.
She is one of six social workers considered for layoffs. With the $250,000 Band-Aid, she and the other 53 employees threatened will keep their jobs a bit longer, but the district can’t say how long.
“I am actually currently four-and-a-half months pregnant,” said Larenilee Reynolds, a social worker at Southeast Alamance High School.
She was told last week she was among six social workers facing layoffs district-wide as part of the Reduction In Force Plan.
“I think I am not the only one out of all the employees affected that wish they would fulfill the contract through the end of the school year, so that gives us more time to find other employment opportunities to feed our families,” she said.
We took her concerns to ABSS Spokesperson Les Atkins who addressed the county commission’s funding stopgap.
“They decided to give us $250,000 to delay any sort of potential RIF Plan in the coming months, and it gives us an opportunity to revisit all of this and revisit our budget as a whole moving forward,” Atkins said.
While district officials crunch the numbers, Reynolds and her husband feel like their family is in limbo.
“It just adds on to the confusion and frustration as employees,” Reynolds said.
The employees notified of a potential layoff include assistant principals, social workers, nurses, middle-school office support workers and elementary art teachers.
Atkins says the mold debacle at many ABSS campuses is not the root of the budget shortfall. He pointed to last June when the school system announced it had $102,000 in fund balances and again to November when a RIF Plan was first mentioned, and the superintendent sent an email to the commission calling the financial situation “dire.”
“What we need to now do is all sit down at the table and come up with solutions,” Atkins said.
He says rising utility costs, benefit costs, insurance and reimbursement policies have contributed to the shortfall. There will be a meeting with the school district, county and state officials to hash out the financial situation Thursday followed by a district board meeting on Feb. 13.
“A lot happens when communities and families and students come together to kind of speak to what’s going on and demand more answers and for us to really understand what went wrong,” Reynolds said.
The hiring freeze will remain in place for non-teaching positions, all purchases will be scrutinized with added intensity, and if they get more funding, they will revisit if they can keep the positions or if they will have to eliminate them.
