Dade seeks state waiver to save money

To offset state funding cuts and a lagging economy, Dade County Schools officials are asking the state for relief from requirements for class size, staffing and spending.

Two years of tightening budgets and a $1 million state funding cut last year forced the county to chop central office staff and cover other costs with reserves. Now reserves are running low, officials said, and they're looking for solutions.

School board Chairwoman Carolyn Bradford said Dade unanimously approved a resolution on Oct. 13 for a "Title 50" waiver, seeking state permission to deviate from some educational guidelines to save money. The board believes the system is facing "substantial hardship," Ms. Bradford said.

State Department of Education spokesman Matt Cardoza said Dade's request didn't make the state board's November agenda so it probably will be heard in January.

Dade Superintendent Patty Priest said the school system kept some funding in place for programs such as early-intervention courses, which try to keep students from slipping behind academically. The county's special purpose local option sales tax has helped bolster the school system's transportation budget, Ms. Priest said.

"We're pinching the pennies twice," but the county needs the waiver, she said.

Dade's request has three prongs.

The first is permission to have a full-time staffer handling curriculum issues rather than a part-time person. Ms. Priest said the position needs to be full time because staff cuts added extra duties to the job.

The second is permission for an oversized statistics class at Dade High School and a few oversized vocational classes.

"We didn't have to ask for a class-size waiver for anything below ninth grade," Mrs. Priest said.

The third is more of a back-up request for relief from classroom expenditures in the event of more cuts this budget year, she said.

"We think we're going to be able to meet (the expenditure requirement), but just in case, we wanted to make sure that we had that waiver in place if we get to the end of the year and more cuts are made," she said.

ABOUT THE WAIVER

A Title 50 waiver is designed to allow the Georgia Department of Education to provide relief from its rules in cases where applying the rules "can lead to unreasonable, uneconomical or unintended results," department spokesman Matt Cardoza said.