LIBERTY — The Amite County School District’s 2009-’10 fiscal budget is in limbo as school officials try to determine where to relocate kindergarten and third-grade students from Liberty Elementary.
A portion of the school’s roof was torn off by high winds during a severe storm in March, forcing officials to close the school and relocate the students for the remainder of the school year.
And with school set to begin on Aug. 6, the decision where to put the younger students has taken on some urgency.
School superintendent Debbie Hopf said Liberty’s seventh- and eighth-grade students will be relocated to Amite County High School, while fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders will remain at Liberty Elementary in a separate building away from the construction work.
But school officials haven’t found a place for the younger students and are considering renting 10 portable buildings to house the children until the work at Liberty is complete.
Hopf said each portable building holds two classrooms and rents for $1,000 each. She said the cost of renting the buildings for one semester is estimated at $100,000, which includes the transportation and set-up costs for each building.
Hopf said if the portable buildings are used, they will be located in front of the high school on a lot between the school and the school district’s central office.
Hopf said at a Thursday board of education meeting that she is working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to get help with renting the buildings, which are not covered by the school district’s insurance.
She said FEMA’s estimate for the building rentals is $95,000.
The cost of the buildings had board members looking at alternatives, including busing the children to Gloster Elementary and considering using empty buildings in Liberty for classrooms.
The relocation problem has put approving the school district’s budget on hold until a solution for the children is determined.
“I’ve got all my stuff ready for the budget,” school district business manager Sherie Jones said. “But I can’t finish it until I know if we’re going to use the portable buildings. If I knew that, the budget would be finished.”
Jones said the school district is looking at an estimated $8 million budget, with $5.43 million in Mississippi Adequate Education Program funds and a projected $2.5 million from local property taxes.
The district faces a $264,067 increase in operations expenses in the 2009-’10 budget, including a $181,894 increase in teacher salaries for step increases, raises for teachers with 25 to 35 years experience, and a $46,587 increase in the county’s loan payments to pay off a $1 million 16th Section fund loan for the Liberty Elementary repairs.
If the school district is forced to rent portable buildings for Liberty Elementary students, then that total is expected to increase to $364,067, Jones said.
“Our budget will be balanced,” Jones said Thursday. “We will have to use some of our ($3.1 million) fund balance to make up the difference for some (revenue) decreases. If we did not have the (Liberty Elementary) restoration in the middle of this, we wouldn’t have a problem, because it (the budget) would be settled.”
