When Hamilton County Schools officials were putting together the budget for this year, their message was clear: Cut costs; money is tight.

So in the end, school officials voted to close several schools and cut 217 positions, including 167 teachers. They also promised to negotiate changes to employee health care, all in an effort to save money.

But since the school year has started, Hamilton County has added more than 150 positions, nearly 90 of which are paid for out of the district’s general purpose budget.

During recent negotiations over health insurance, Hamilton County Education Association President Sharon Vandagriff and Rhonda Catanzaro, a liaison with the Tennessee Education Association, said they didn’t see why the school system was so anxious to charge employees more for health insurance when it appeared that finances weren’t so tight after all.

The women said with the added positions, the school system didn’t appear to be “hurting” as much as officials initially had said.

Tommy Kranz, Hamilton County’s chief financial officer, said almost all the positions were added to keep up with this year’s increased enrollment.

As of the 20th day of school this year, the district had about 650 more students than last year, so officials had to add teachers and assistant principals to avoid violating the state’s pupil-teacher ratios, Mr. Kranz said.

With the extra students comes some extra revenue from the state, which partially covers the cost of the new hires, Mr. Kranz said. Additionally, the school system’s instructional reserve — backup, emergency money to fund unexpected positions — paid for 13 positions, he said.

Hamilton County Board of Education Chairman Kenny Smith acknowledged that it didn’t look good for the school system to add so many positions after the start of the school year. But with so many more students this year, he said he didn’t believe it could have been helped.

“I can see where it would hurt morale, but I don’t think anyone intended to do that,” he said. “I can understand people’s impression. It seems like each month we have several new hires.”

Still, Hamilton County is about $2 million short in covering those positions. Due to the retirements of higher-paid employees, unfilled vacancies and leaves of absences, Mr. Kranz said he thinks most of the $2 million will be covered.

“Typically, the budgeted payroll expense is greater than the actual expense in total,” he said. “We’re getting really tight now, though.”

In addition to positions paid for out of the general purpose budget, the district added about 60 interventionist positions paid for with federal money. Most of the new employees were retired principals who work with small groups of students who need extra help in math or reading.