High marks low money for schools
By Arthur McLean Editor

Thomasville's city school system made the mark for achieving the state's average yearly progress goals for the second year in a row, but the system will have to hit that mark next year with less money.

All three schools in the system reached 100 percent of the state's goals for measuring school achievement to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act. It is the second year in a row the system has met the goals.

In 2004, the system failed to meat a handful of goals, meaning it was slated to fall under the state's school improvement program, but for the 2005 and 2006 school years, the system has met its average yearly progress goals and thus coming out from under the state's improvement program.

"We're very pleased with the news," said superintendent Vic Adkison.

While the news is good, the school system will have to match that feat next year on a tighter budget, with one of the slimmest fund balances in recent memory, according to school system CFO Linda McGhee.

State mandated pay increases and stagnation in the growth of local funding are beginning to put a squeeze on school system budgets, Adkison said previously. For the 2006-2007 school year, the system continued to dip into its fund balance to pay for staff and teacher positions that were not funded by state or federal programs.

For the coming school year, some belt-tightening has already happened with the shifting of personnel throughout the schools and the reduction of five positions from the system.

In addition, the school received more troubling news on the financial front. Adkison received a letter from Clarke County Revenue Commissioner Jay Duke last week indicating that an audit revealed the county had overpaid property tax revenues to the schools over the past three years.

Now the county is demanding the school refund the overpayments totaling $107,748.42. "This is bad news," Adkison said. "And it has come at a bad time."

School officials were obvi- ously displeased with the news. The county is requesting the money be paid back by Sept. 30. "We should be able to pay it back over three years since they paid it to us over three years," quipped board member Kevin Smoker.

The news falls during a time when Boise Cascade is fighting its property tax bill with the county in court. To date, the company has refused to pay the bill until a settlement is reached, adding to the cash crunch, not only for Thomasville's schools, but the county system as well.

And though the county discovered problems in its audit, the Thomasville school system received high marks on its financial audit. The report cited the school for not filing a planned debt expenditures report with the local newspaper by Oct. 30 of each year and for having fewer financial staff than recommended, something common amongst smaller school systems.

The overall findings of the report were positive, however.

In other business, the board heard a report that Bob Smith Construction will be making some repairs to the football stadium before the start of football season this year. Several concrete panels have become detached from the front of the stands. The panels are primarily cosmetic and pose no danger to the structural stability of the stands themselves.

The board also approved the hiring of Clinton Grimes, science teacher at THS, and William Ingram, alternative school teacher for TMS.

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