Serving Barnwell County and it's neighbors since 1852
The Allendale County School District (ACSD) has approved its 2024-25 budget, which includes cost-of-living raises for teachers, bus drivers and other staff, retention bonuses for current teachers and sign-on bonuses for new teachers.
The $18,027,361 budget is a 17.22% increase from the 2023-24 school year’s $15,379,499 budget, with much of the increase going towards salaries and benefits. Angela Grant, ACSD director of finance, said the budget prioritizes retention, minimizing administrative and capital costs, and fiscal responsibility.
“The majority of the money is actually in people,” Grant said. “We’ve budgeted for teachers and additional staff to come in and work with students who are falling behind for six days [additional] on the calendar [year].”
The 2024-25 budget is aimed at addressing ACSD’s major staffing shortage. The elementary school is currently seeking applicants for art, music, physical education and early childhood teachers, while the middle school is seeking applicants for English, math and social studies teachers, and the high school is seeking applicants for business education, English, math, band, science, social studies and spanish teachers. The district is also hiring instructors for different trade-related courses, like auto mechanics and construction. In addition to teachers, the school district is in need of coaches, food service workers and bus drivers.
ACSD’s staffing shortage is part of a nationwide shortage of public school teachers that has occurred since the pandemic. Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics find that 300,000 public school teachers left the profession between February 2020 and May 2022. Low pay, burnout and poor working conditions are among the top reasons teachers are leaving the workforce, the National School Boards Association finds, with rural communities struggling most to retain current employees and hire qualified teachers.
To attract new teachers, the ACSD has budgeted a $15,000 sign-on bonus for new teachers into the 2024-25 budget (international teachers are not included in the sign-on bonus initiative). The 2024-25 budget also includes $200,000 for teacher performance pay. In May, the South Carolina Department of Education funded $100,000 in payouts to high-performing teachers in the district as part of an effort to improve teacher retention and appreciation, as previously reported by The People-Sentinel.
The budget also anticipates the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER), a $190 billion federal program passed by Congress during the pandemic to help public schools. The end of ESSER’s final funding round will be September 30, 2024.
Although the ACSD’s 2024-25 budget is an increase over the 2023-24 budget, the school board anticipates that cuts will be made to the 2025-26 budget due to falling enrollment; in 2015, ACSD had 1243 students, while in 2024, ACSD will have 866 students, according to ACSD enrollment data. This decrease has occurred concurrently with the declining population of Allendale County.
“This is very important and it’s going to be very difficult but it’s something that we’re going to have to do,” Grant said. ‘We’re going to have to make a $3 million cut to the overall budget for 2025-26. We’re going to make these cuts in order to better align our enrollments.”
The sign-on bonus initiative will not be budgeted for the 2025-26 year, ACSD Superintendent Dr. Vallerie Cave said, and discussions surrounding the 2025-26 budget will begin in October.
“The easiest way to do it [is to] cut vacancies first,” Cave said, noting that the district is prepared to increase class sizes to up to 21 students in the future. “Then we’ll look at other positions that have not been filled. My goal will be to save as many people their jobs without cutting those current employees that we have.”
At the end of the meeting, board member Hazeline Perry raised concerns about the board’s level of involvement in decision making.
“Everything has been presented [to us], but there are some things we’ve had questions about,” Perry said, expressing her concern that the board has not been involved enough in ongoing ACSD projects. “To speak for myself, it’s somewhat embarrassing because the people in the community know that we’re like a figurehead and nothing more. … I’m not trying to be funny or disrespectful, but I’m just saying usually boards play a different role.”
Before going into effect, the 2024-25 budget must be approved by the South Carolina Department of Education.
Elijah de Castro is a Report for America corps member who writes about rural communities like Allendale and Barnwell counties for The People-Sentinel. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep Elijah writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today.
