County residents are invited to attend a town hall meeting being hosted by the Walker County Board of Education Thursday, April 4 at 6:30 p.m. inside the auditorium of the Advancing Education Center, 925 Osburn Road in Chickamauga.
“Hopefully a lot of folks will come out,” said Walker County Schools Superintendent Damon Raines, adding that attendees can write down questions to read to the board at the meeting. “It’s a planning session, so it will run like a board meeting.”
One of the topics will be a budget preview for Walker County Schools for fiscal year 2014.
“We will discuss anticipated changes,” said Raines. “The funding from the state has not changed. It’s a bleak picture again. We have to look at what we offer as far as services and see where we can cut. We will have to make adjustments.”
In response to the state’s flat yet insufficient funding, the board plans to cut county schools’ Title 1 funding by 5.5 percent and special education funding by 8 percent, he said.