Jones County has gotten statewide media coverage due to the Board of Education’s consideration of a four-day week for its schools.

As other state agencies are being forced to move toward four-day weeks, School Superintendent Jim LeBrun said nothing is off the table during a speech to Jones County’s Rotary Club last Thursday.

“I don’t see us going to a four-day school week next year,” he said, “but if gas hits $6 in April, we’ll have to do something.”

During the budgeting process, the superintendent said he was forced to budget fuel at $4 instead of $5 as he had originally planned because the budget would not allow extra fuel expense.

He pointed out that he knows what impact such a drastic change could make.

“Changing school culture changes society,” said LeBrun, “but I understand some city and county work crews have moved to four-day weeks.”

He continued by explaining the reasons why the board is looking at the change and that student performance would not be in jeopardy.

“If we moved to a four-day week, we could save $250,000 to $300,000, and that’s not considering other savings such as salaries for drivers and food service,” said LeBrun. “This is happening in about 120 school systems nationwide, and studies have shown there is no significant difference in student performance. In fact, students would be able to have remediation on the fifth day rather than falling behind and having to make it up on Saturdays or summer school.”

Budget shortfalls

The superintendent outlined the reasons the school system is facing these hardships. He noted layoffs in both private and public sectors, including 400 jobs at Rheem in Baldwin County and 22 teachers losing their jobs in the Bibb County school system.

LeBrun said they have seen these budget cuts coming.

“If we’re cut during an economic surplus, we knew we were really going to be cut this year,” he said.

The school system has not received and does not expect the homestead exemption disbursement from the state, which this year totals $711,000 just for Jones County schools. The governor’s mandated 2-percent across the board cut for all systems totals $900,000, with an expected 5-percent cut next year.

By next year, the Jones County Board of Education will be looking at a loss of $3.5 million in state funds as the governor works on making up a $2 billion shortfall that could go as high as $2.4 billion.

Layoffs

LeBrun said cutting that amount from the budget without cutting personnel would be easy, but he hopes to make up some of the loss through attrition, which would include teachers retiring or leaving the system.

“It will be challenging for us to continue to operate this way,” he said,” but we will without cutting personnel or laying people off. Next year, there will have to be a reduction in staff if things do not improve, but we hope to do this through attrition.”

The superintendent said that the budget for building maintenance and construction are separate, so work will continue on building the new elementary school near the intersection of Turnerwoods and Morton roads.

“Our challenge is to continue serving the needs of the community while giving students the education we know they need,” he said.

Energy Plan

LeBrun outlined the county’s energy management plan in an effort to reduce expenses. He said an average electricity bill for the high school is about $20,000, and with eight facilities to heat and cool, there is much room for improvement.

Lighting is one area that has had opportunity for savings.

“Part of the $4 million renovation at the high school was installing high efficiency lighting,” he said. “Now you’ll actually be able to see the ball on the basketball court. The floors are lighter, the lights are brighter, and in the long run, we’ll save money.”

He added that classrooms with high efficiency lighting can often go with only half the lights on, which increases the savings.

Cooling the county’s schools during the summer months has proven highly expensive, which is being approached from two angles. The first is to change the day school starts.

Three schedules have been proposed for 2009-10 (see chart). The goal is to change the start date to get as many days out of August as possible.

“It’s cheaper to run air conditioning in June than August,” said LeBrun. “We are looking at calendar two with a start date around August 20. I would like to start around Labor Day, but that would push us into the third week of June and cause problems with state requirements.”

The second approach is to change the thresholds for heating and cooling. Newer schools have thermostats that can be maintained remotely. Older schools have to take it upon themselves to set temperatures reasonably.

“Air conditioning will keep rooms between 73 and 76 degrees,” said LeBrun. “During the more comfortable months, like we’re experiencing now, we’ll actually shut down units completely.”

The superintendent also said changes to temperature controls during the summer will be made.

“We will be implementing cleaning teams to focus on one or two schools at a time,” he said. “When no one will be in the schools, air conditioning will be set at 84 degrees, which is the highest it can be without creating mildew problems.”

LeBrun wrapped up his energy discussion by giving an example of excess that will be controlled in the future.

“At one elementary school, we had a frantic parent come to the school after dropping off her kids to give them their jackets,” he said. “She said it was so cold in the classrooms that they needed them.”