The Culver Community Schools Corporation is down 54 students from last year. Interim Superintendent Chuck Kitchell provided updated enrollment figures to the school board Monday. “One of the things that happened is we graduated, I believe, 66 seniors. We brought in a kindergarten class of 36,” Kitchell said. “And so that takes up 30 of those kids that are not in our buildings, just from the transition from seniors going out to kindergartners coming in. It’s obviously the smallest kindergarten class we’ve ever had. Obviously, we’ve already reduced it down to two sections.”
He says the count still hasn’t been finalized, but it appears the corporation’s fall enrollment sits at 778.1. “Obviously, that then has an impact on our ’17 budget, which will be dramatically less than what we were even planning on when we were counting on having 820 students, which was a decrease,” he said.
The school board is scheduled to vote on adopting the 2017 budget during its October 17 meeting. Kitchell is already talking about some additional staff cuts at the end of the current school year.
Meanwhile, he also says he’s working with the other Fulton County school superintendents on a list of recommendations for state lawmakers. “We’ve asked for a different funding formula,” he said. “We will be giving them some very specific ideas how they can fund small and rural schools through what used to be called the small and rural schools grant. We’re giving them a formula that we think would work, at least from our perspective, how they could help increase some of the funding for small schools. We’re going to talk about vouchers and private schools and those kinds of things, the perspective that we have on that, and the referendum process.”
They plan to present their proposal to legislators next week. Kitchell says lawmakers have been asking for policy recommendations ahead of next month’s election. He expressed optimism that they’ll act on at least some of the proposed measures.
