With Hamilton County Schools officials predicting a tight budget year, some board members are questioning whether every school needs the student support positions they’ve been allocated in past years.
School board member Jodi Schaffer, R-East Brainerd, said she’d been asked to advocate for the idea that all schools don’t need a student support coach, counselor and social worker. Instead, she said, school administrators should be able to pick which positions their school needs using the strategic staffing funds that give principals the ability to tailor staff to meet student needs.
At least one other school board member said she’d heard similar thoughts from the schools she represents.
“I’m not saying these positions aren’t good or valuable,” school board member Felice Hadden, R-Ooltewah, said Monday. “But we’re in a very tough season with a budget needing to cut a lot of positions, so why are we just so sure that we want to keep these positions and are willing to cut others? Why can’t we let the principal decide that?”
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District officials have repeatedly said they expect next school year’s budget to be tight.
For the 2025-26 academic year, the district is looking at reducing the number of full-time staff by around 88 school-based employees and 20 central office positions, Superintendent Justin Robertson said at Monday’s school board finance committee meeting.
He expects the reduction in school-based positions to happen through attrition or retirement.
In 2023, the district changed its staffing model, which included increased investments in wellness support staff, with the windfall it received from the state changing its school funding formula.
The student support coach, counselor and social worker positions were designed to address student and teacher needs, Robertson said. The three positions, he said, work together to help schools execute the strategic plan the board approved. Five of the 11 board members have been newly elected since then.
“It’s our belief that if you look after the well-being of kids that the academics will follow,” he said.
In order to operate successfully as a district the size of Hamilton County, Robertson said, there needs to be coherence and consistency. At the same time, he recognizes flexibility is important, he said, which was a balance the staffing model aimed to achieve.
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School board member Ben Daugherty, R-Signal Mountain, said he agreed with Schaffer.
“Every school’s different,” he said. “Every school has different case loads, different needs within those kids, within the communities, and allowing those principals to have the autonomy within a budget to designate how they feel certain positions should be allocated, as opposed to all or nothing, as I believe is the way it is today, I think there’s a benefit to that.”
Deputy Superintendent Sonia Stewart said data the district looks at show those positions are critical.
“Is daily attendance going up in our schools?” she said. “Is chronic absenteeism going down in our schools? Are kids having fewer incidents of misbehavior? And the answer to all those data points is yes. When kids are coming to school more and they’re better situated in the classroom, learning will come.”
The point of having a base staffing model is saying the board believes every student deserves access to those things, said school board member Jill Black, D-Chattanooga. Those investments were strategically done to provide an infrastructure that focused on child well-being, she said.
“The data points to that this is working,” she said. “If we’re heading in the right direction and we’re finally addressing issues that have always existed and we’re finally making headway on issues that we haven’t made headway on in the past, the question is do we want to step back from that when it’s working?”
District officials expect to present a budget at the start of April and have the board vote on it in May.
Contact Shannon Coan at scoan@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6396.