This fall, while Haywood County students are focused on homework, football, the opposite sex and the many other preoccupations of youth, their teachers and administrators are mapping a plan to make them more successful and competitive when they leave Haywood’s hallowed halls of learning.

2010 is a year for Long Range Strategic Planning in the school system, and if you gave only a cursory glance to the state of schools in North Carolina, you’d think they have their work cut out for them.

Haywood County Schools alone have seen $5.2 million in funding cuts since January 2009. Instead of increasing teacher assistants as planned, they are losing them left, right and center to lack of funding, struggling to keep hold of the 68 that remain. Meanwhile, the economy outside the school budget has worsened as well, and more than half of Haywood County students are now eligible for free or reduced lunch, a measure the school uses to gauge poverty levels among its students.

But Assistant Superintendent Bill Nolte said he doesn’t look at it like that. He knows that the increase in poverty and need among students and the decrease in funding is — and will continue to be — a challenge.

“We know our population is changing,” Nolte said “We know that our free and reduced lunch rate has changed about 10 percent in the last 11 years.”

But he’s also optimistic that the changes that have happened since the last long-range planning sessions in 2005 have not all been for the worse.

“The world really is different,” Nolte said. “I mean we’re changing at a very rapid rate. It’s just amazing. When these recommendations were made (in 2005) I had dialup at my house and could not get cable. I hope the (new) recommendations are different, because we don’t want recommendations for 2010, we want people to think about ‘OK, what’s it going to be like in 15 years or 17 years and what should we be striving for?’”

To do that, Nolte and his team have identified five areas they want to plan for, and then called on the community to help them map out the steps to get there in the long term.

The school system asked anyone who was interested — parents, community leaders, business people and just interested residents — to volunteer for committees that would spend anywhere from weeks to months suggesting what they think schools and students need to be doing in the future.

They try to stay within the state objectives and keep the school’s mission statement in mind, but Nolte said school administrators try to give the committees free-rein in dreaming up their recommendations, hoping to stir up innovation and creative thinking that wouldn’t happen under strictly-imposed guidelines.

But Knox Hardin, the school system’s testing director and co-chair of the committee tasked with producing globally competitive students, said that the state of affairs in the county, state and nation has put something of a damper on how far recommendations can go.

“Five years ago, we were not in the economic situation that we’re in now,” said Hardin, who co-chaired a similar committee during the 2005 planning process. “We have been asked to try and at least give half of our recommendations that we make that would not be dependent on funding. Five years ago, we could look pie-in-the-sky.”

Besides wholesale changes in the economy and the system’s funding base, this year’s plan will likely be vastly different from 2005 because the school system itself is moving in a new direction. Just over two years ago, the system adopted a new mission that places passion and productivity at the heart of all they do. And Nolte hopes that the committees will keep this in focus when they’re looking into the future.

“One of the things we talk to (the committees) about is as you’re developing recommendations, please remember our missions,” said Nolte. “Is this something we would fight for, lobby for, advocate for, spend for? Is it a productive way to do it? Does it promote student success in some objective measure that we have for students?”

Looking back at the 2005 recommendations, some did clearly fit those criteria. Out of 20 recommendations that the school system adopted, it only fully achieved nine, which included a major reduction in dropout rates, gym remodels at both Pisgah and Tuscola high schools, and beefing up technology education, both in quantity and quality.

Two of the recommendations — increase teacher assistants in grade K-3 and build an additional middle school — weren’t met at all. In fact, they actually lost teacher assistants and are struggling to keep the ones they have, although Nolte said this is simply a matter of money, or the lack of it.  

Of the other nine goals, all were met partially, but to varying degrees. Some, like activity bus replacement, were halted with the budget drop. Others, such as computer, router and server replacement have been nearly met, with a good computer replacement cycle in place with only a lag in server replacement.

Still others, however, were sort-of met but lack a good bit before they could credibly be called successful. For example, the directive to provide staff development focusing on the Spanish-speaking population included only one summer “staff development” and a 30-minute refresher course, with a few “scheduled meetings” tacked on for good measure.

Hardin said that now, when the committees meet, they look back at these, assessing where they succeeded, where they failed and what failures should be tackled again.

“The ideal goal is to come up with suggestions that can help improve academic performance and have future-ready graduates that are ready to go into the workplace or ready to go into the next step beyond high school,” Hardin said. “We need to have our kids prepared to do the best at whatever they do when they leave school.”

Nolte echoes this sentiment, saying that he hopes the plan will provide a path towards making all of Haywood County’s schools better in what may continue to be very tough times.

“The recommendations are a real, tangible guiding beacon. They give real direction to your decision making,” said Nolte. “We really do believe that everything’s important. We really do believe that you’re not a great school system if you only do one or two things well and other things are really crummy.”

On Monday evening, the Jackson County Board of Commissioners met with leaders from Jackson County Schools to talk about next year’s budget, but any outstanding fears had already been put to rest.

County Manager Ken Westmoreland said because the county has spent 12 percent less than it budgeted for the current fiscal year, he didn’t anticipate cuts in any county departments.

“I do not anticipate any furloughs, layoffs, or losses of service,” Westmoreland said. “We’re pretty much just going to tread water.”

Jackson County Public School Superintendent Sue Nations said her staff had already submitted capital outlay and operating requests to Westmoreland for consideration. The school district is asking for a 2 percent increase in funding to offset increases in insurance premiums and deep cuts in state discretionary funds.

Westmoreland said the county would evaluate the school budget request in line with its other funding obligations.

“It’s not that they would be treated any differently than any county department or agency we fund,” Westmoreland said. “I’m not anticipating any cuts or expansions.”

For her part, Nations was confident that the county would come through for the school district, but she expressed concern about Gov. Perdue’s proposed budget.

“The county will give us the amount of money we had last year, and I hope they’ll give us the 2 percent increase,” Nations said. “But the county can’t pick up what the state won’t give us.”

Perdue’s 2010 budget calls for $135 million of cuts in addition to the $304.8 million worth of discretionary cuts already contained in the budget the General Assembly approved last year for the 2010-11 fiscal year. Overall, the governor’s budget calls for an additional 3.8 percent in cuts plus another $90 million in General Fund reductions to the K-12 budget.

According to the North Carolina School Boards Association, districts across North Carolina had 16,253 fewer state paid public education jobs, including 4,701 fewer state paid classroom teachers, in the 2009-10 academic year. The additional $135 million in discretionary cuts could mean as many as 2,430 additional teaching positions could be eliminated next year.

Nations said her district already employs 95 fewer people than it did in May 2008. She said she does not intend to cut any positions this year, because she hasn’t replaced employees that have left or retired.

“I know we have to do our part. I really do,” Nations said. “But there’s a point at which it’s going to affect the classroom.”

Nations said the district would still benefit from federal stimulus money it received last year. Districts were instructed to use the money over a 27-month period, and last year the stimulus funds offset state cuts nearly dollar for dollar.

Despite using every nook and cranny available, Swain County schools are still struggling to track down classroom space for its exploding student population.

The number of students at Swain County High School has shot up so dramatically that the school has outgrown its auditorium and must now hold two assemblies instead of one on every occasion.

“That’s a time issue, and sometimes, a money issue,” said Regina Mathis, principal of Swain County High, which often has to pay speakers double the price.

In the 2002-2003 school year, 1,679 students attended the county’s schools. By 2008-2009, that number that had grown to 1,840.

Swain County High School shows the biggest rise in students, with an increase of 110 students in the last six years.

The high school has tried to accommodate that growth by asking four teachers to share classroom space. It has converted an auto mechanics classroom into a regular classroom, even using the hallway that leads up to the room as lab space, and transformed an equipment storage room next to the gymnasium into a small classroom.

What used to be a student lounge with couches is now office space for support staff. Where chorus students formerly practiced singing, history classes have taken their place.

One math teacher and his students must trek out to a doublewide from the school each day, cutting time spent in class.

“That’s a little inconvenient for kids if it’s raining,” said Mathis.

And the problem is not limited to just the high school. Elementary schools in Swain have even held art and music classes on stages in the past.

Running out of time

The problem is not new. A committee was formed to assess building needs in January 2007, and several solutions have been discussed. But with little funding to implement the solutions, Swain schools have been left struggling.

In 2009, Swain County qualified for a federal school bond program that gives lenders a tax break for funding school construction. But the county has been unable to lock down any lenders so far, County Manager Kevin King said.

According to the committee’s plans, Swain West Elementary will ideally be first to get new classrooms. Next in line would be Swain East Elementary.

The committee’s plans also call for a new $25 to $30 million high school to be built on a 50-acre tract the county purchased a few years ago for that purpose near the current high school site.

Meanwhile, the middle school would be cut down to only seventh and eighth grades and move into the old high school. The old middle school could then become a third elementary school for the county.

Mathis said the committee has looked at installing $1 million or $2 million additions, but such small expansions would only be a stopgap measure.

“Why put that in if we’re going to have $25 million for a new high school?” asked Mathis. “Sure, I’d love to have more classrooms, but in the long run, it doesn’t make sense.”

Sam Pattillo, facilities director for Swain County’s schools, said this is only a preliminary plan, however, not something that’s been set in stone.

“It’s a start for discussion,” said Pattillo.

King pointed out that building the high school alone might result in a whopping 15 cent tax increase to cover $1.9 million each year in bond payments.

Rather than employ a piecemeal approach right now, King recommends tackling the entire problem in 2018, when the school system’s current debt of about $900,000 will be mostly paid off.

“It’s not attainable right now,” said King. “If it’s not attainable, then there’s really no need to pursue it.”

But Mathis said eight years might be a long time to wait.

“Looking over the last eight years, we’ve grown 27 percent,” said Mathis. “What if within the next eight years, we grow 27 more?”

The county will soon begin reaping dividends from the North Shore Road cash settlement. At a minimum, the county will receive around $800,000 a year in interest, and it could grow much larger if the federal government follows through on paying the full settlement it has promised.

The interest off the cash settlement fund could potentially be set aside for school construction.

But school board member Jerry McKinney said he’s concerned about tying up the North Shore money in a reoccurring expense like bond payments.

“I’d rather see other ways of funding construction needs,” said McKinney. “But education should get the lion’s share [of the settlement], I believe.”

Other options for getting the new high school built before 2018 include holding a bond referendum to ask the people whether they’d support a tax increase to build the high school. It’s doubtful that such a major tax increase would pass in Swain or anywhere else, however.

McKinney, who is running for county commissioner, said having such a small tax base in Swain always poses a challenge for school funding.

But McKinney understands space needs in Swain County schools are a pressing issue and new that facilities are necessary.

McKinney pointed out that Swain County still had the same number of gymnasiums it had when he was a boy.

“The old one at the middle school is 70 plus years old,” said McKinney. “We keep renovating, we keep adding to it, trying to keep it up. Because of that there is a need in this community.”

Macon County’s schools will get a long-awaited upgrade, but its taxpayers are going to have to pay extra for it.

County commissioners voted last Tuesday to raise the property tax rate by one-and-a-half cents to build a $15 million elementary school. The new tax rate will go into effect next year. The move will also fund several smaller school construction projects contained in a 10-year capital plan.

County Manager Jack Horton said the plan was a conservative way to accomplish much-needed school improvements.

“These are what I would call essential and necessary construction projects following the long-term school renovation plan,” Horton said. “There aren’t any frills here. This is as conservative as we could come up with.”

The construction of North Macon School will consolidate the two existing elementary schools of Cowee and Iotla, in addition to accommodating around 70 students now attending East Franklin Elementary.

As a result of the consolidation, Cowee’s grade school will go out of service and the current building at Iotla will be razed so the new school can be built in its place.

In November 2007, the public narrowly voted down a $42 million bond issue for school construction. Plans called for building two new schools — one for grades K-4 and one for grades five and six — and doing away with three smaller schools of Cullasaja, Iotla and Cowee.

The bond measure failed by a near miss, but the school board and county commissioners decided to move forward with the construction anyway. A fifth-and sixth-grade school and the expansion at East Franklin were completed, but the new North Macon elementary was temporarily put on hold due to budget shortfalls related to the recession.

The commissioners’ decision to fund the construction of the North Macon School through an increase in property taxes also included plans to allocate $1.8 million for the Nantahala K-12 school, to be obtained through a low-interest loan program made available through the stimulus package. The county will also move $1.3 million from school reserve to fund repairs and renovations at Franklin High School.

Commissioners acknowledged that raising taxes during a recession was risky. But with construction costs at an all-time low and the availability of attractive interest rates through federal stimulus loans, the county’s remaining school facilities needs could be accomplished at an affordable price tag.

“The need has been there, and construction costs are at an all-time low,” Horton said. “The stimulus money and the low-interest loans make it attractive to do these projects now.”

Gambling on the economy

Commissioner Jim Davis, who represented the county board alongside Chairman Ronnie Beale on the school liaison committee, said the vote to raise taxes was a calculated risk.

“It is a gamble. We’re gambling that the economy is not going to get worse, and we don’t know that,” Davis said. “Macon County is in an extremely good position to weather the storm, and I don’t want to jeopardize that. There’s a reason why we have a good fund balance and that’s because our commissioners have historically been careful about how they spend the county’s money.”

School Superintendent Dan Brigman said the funding plan approved by the board will make the district safer and provide a better learning environment. With the construction of the North Macon School, children across the district won’t be limited in their choices of school because of capacity issues.

“It’s basically going to set up a situation where there is a school choice option with capacity not being a barrier,” Brigman said.

In addition, Brigman said the district would save $250,000 per year in operating costs by consolidating the schools, as well as making it free of mobile classrooms for the first time in years.

Brigman said the board’s vote last week was the culmination of years of effort by the school liaison committee that he regards as a triumph of cooperation between the school board and the county. The school liaison committee incorporated two members from the school board, two from the county board, and financial and executive officers from the district and the county.

“There has been a partnership existing between the two boards that is like nothing I’ve experienced in the six counties and two states I’ve served as an educator,” said Brigman.

But while the vote was unanimous in the end, a lively debate arose over whether the board was going far enough to improve the county’s school facilities.

Commissioner Bobby Kuppers argued passionately that an additional half cent tax increase could allow the county to renovate the gym and install artificial turf on the football field at Franklin High as well.

Brigman said the 52-year-old gym is too small to accommodate community events and the natural turf field couldn’t take the traffic of year-round use for student and community activities.

“I think we’re gambling that we’re at the bottom of the curve. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be talking about a cent and a half,” Kuppers said. “The only reason I’m bringing this up is I want the seed to be planted that for a half a cent more we should finish the job.”

Beale replied that while the high school might need the renovations, they weren’t part of the liaison committee’s discussion.

“We have met for four years to figure out a plan that would work and never has anyone mentioned a gym,” said Beale. “I’m not saying it’s not needed. I’m not saying that at all.”

Davis said he was already uncomfortable raising taxes when taxpayers were hurting, and he didn’t believe the athletic facilities should be prioritized the same way as instructional facilities.

“My comfort zone is stretched to go ahead and build this school now to raised taxes 1.5 cents,” Davis said. “We’re trying to make up for a lack of planning in the past.”

It’s not an uncommon scene: people rattling a tin can outside Wal-Mart to raise money, whether it’s a cheerleading squad saving up for new uniforms or the Salvation Army bell ringers.

There’s no shortage of good samaritans asking shoppers to ante up for a noble cause here and there, but a group camped out on the Wal-Mart sidewalk in Waynesville last week had a way of stopping people in their tracks.

The Save a Teacher Campaign in Haywood County is aiming to raise enough money to pay the salaries, and thus save the jobs, of the teachers and teacher assistants laid off this summer by Haywood County Schools.

The Haywood County Schools Foundation has already put up enough money from their coffers to save one teacher, and is now challenging the community to save the next one.

“We are looking at this one teacher at a time,” said Steve Brown, the director of the school foundation, a nonprofit that works to support the school system.

Among the donors dipping into their pockets last week was one teacher who herself was laid off.

“Maybe this can help save someone else’s job since I already lost mine,” said Amy Greene, as she pulled a few dollars from her wallet. Greene ran the computer lab at Junaluska Elementary School. She is five months pregnant and has made the decision to stay home rather than find other work, but she feels bad for those who don’t have that luxury.

“I always thought, ‘You know, if I go into this, I will always have a job because there will always be kids to teach,’” Greene said.

Parents, teachers and former teachers were most likely to pitch in during last week’s fund-drive, including Toni Mullany, a former teacher, who is now a social worker. She sees the positive role teachers play in children’s lives.

“When your home life is chaotic, the one stability you have is your teacher,” Mullany said.

Mullany said it is a shame the state is cutting education, but not surprising.

“Children can’t vote. Their voices aren’t heard,” Mullany said.

Parents, of course, do vote and care, said Cynthia Shuford, the president of the PTO at Bethel Elementary. Teachers are a very important influence in her son’s life, she said.

“He is with the teachers as long or longer than he is with us,” Shuford said.

Uphill battle

Brown hopes the effort will soften the blow of state budget cuts. But given the loss of 32 teaching positions in Haywood County — coming straight out of the classroom — the campaign has its work cut out to make a dent in the problem.

“We need, as a community, to pull together and do what we can to help,” Brown said.

And as schools in North Carolina face budget cuts of historic proportions, they need all the help they can get. The state plans to cut public school funding by $236 million for the coming year. Lawmakers were initially toying with far deeper cuts that would have drastically altered the classroom landscape. Backlash, and firm resistence by Governor Beverly Perdue to pass such a budget, led to a tax increase in lieu of the deeper cuts to schools.

Nonetheless, it’s the worst budget situation that longtime school administrators like John Sanderson, who spent 17 years as the principal of Central Elementary School, can remember.

“We’ve had tight budgets, but never a situation like this at all,” Sanderson says. “This is the toughest in my memory.”

The more severe budget cuts intially on the table would have increased class sizes for K-3. Sanderson was relieved that did not come to fruition.

“I can say without a doubt when you increase class size, particularly at the elementary school level, it does have a negative impact on the classroom,” Sanderson said.

But with possible cutbacks to personnel, making sure there are enough teachers could present its own challenge to school systems.

“Bottom line is, we don’t really have a choice,” said Dan Moore, director of personnel for Macon County Schools. “We’re not going to put 50 kids in an elementary classroom. If there [are] drastic cuts, we’ll have to look elsewhere.”

Last resort

Anne Garrett, superintendent of Haywood County Schools, is well aware of just how tough times are. The Haywood system stands to lose $1.2 million under the proposed state budget. Locally, the system has already faced $1 million in cuts.

“We’ve lost over $2 million, and school hasn’t started,” Garrett says.

The Haywood County school system looked to trim costs everywhere possible — supplies, new buildings, staff development — in order to avoid the most dreaded cuts: staff. It didn’t take long to exhaust every option, since salaries make up the biggest expense to the system.

“It’s hard to squeeze your budget with pens and pencils,” says Dan Moore, finance officer for the neighboring Macon County Schools. “It ends up being people.”

Macon will see a net loss of 14 teachers this school year with a state budget cut of $674,000 and a county budget cut of $200,000. Swain will see a net loss of three positions.

For months, school systems have been in limbo waiting for the state budget to be unveiled. Schools have known they’ll be facing big cuts, but haven’t been certain of exactly how much.

“We’ve heard so many different rumors about the amount, and it’s hard to come up with any concrete plan when there are so many rumors being floated around,” said Moore. “We’re preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.”

The waiting game forced most school system to keep teachers at arms length all summer not knowing if they would have a job come the state of the school year.

In June, Haywood announced it would not renew contracts for 54 teachers. They’ve been able to hire about 40 of those teachers back, however, reducing the number of actual lay-offs. Some teachers were saved when state cuts weren’t as severe as intially thought. Others were able to move into jobs vacated by teachers who were retiring.

What’s lost?

The Haywood school system saw a net loss of 32 positions, 23 of which were teacher’s assistants. The blow is a devastating one, particularly to the elementary grades.

Teacher’s assistants play a critical role, providing much of the housekeeping for a classroom — from helping a child find a missing lunchbox to discipline — thus freeing up teachers to focus on learning.

Teaching a roomful of elementary school students with a spectrum of abilities is a difficult task but is more plausible with the help of an assistant, said Toni Mullany, a former elementary school teacher who lives in Haywood County.

“They can say, ‘Let’s go over here in the corner and see if we can work through this math problem,’” Mullany said.

Cynthia Shuford, whose son is going into the second grade, couldn’t imagine his classroom without a teacher’s assistant.

“It would just be too much. Their learning would go down,” said Shuford, the president of the PTO at Bethel Elementary School.

Not all teacher’s assistants serve in a traditional classroom setting. Many work in special settings with children with disabilities or chronic discipline problems, and those who need extra help learning. Rena White, now a fifth grade teacher at Clyde Elementary School, served as a teacher’s assistant for years in a class for special needs students. She did everything from emptying catheters for students in wheelchairs to doing physical therapy.

Donnie and Joyce Bryson, the parents of a special needs student in Haywood County, were devastated when they learned early this summer that their son’s favorite teacher lost her job. She was in fact a teacher’s assistant who had put her nursing degree to work in the schools with special needs students. She had even come to visit the Brysons’ son in the hospital, which he visits frequently.

But as the state refined its budget over the course of the summer and the severity of the cuts lessened, the teacher, Shirley Downey, got to keep her job after all, providing a huge relief to the Brysons.

Amy Greene, who lost her job running the computer lab at Junaluska Elementary, was classified as a teacher’s assistant.

She did computer instruction for every student in the school at least once a week, and twice a week for those in third through fifth grade.

While Greene taught, the teachers reveled in the rare hiatus from students to plan for the next week or grade papers.

Now, teachers will presumably have to do their own instruction in the computer lab, not only adding to the workload but taking away a needed planning session.

At Central Elementary School, the positions for three teacher’s assistants who worked with underperforming students were cut. The school used to have six, but this year will only have three.

“It is going to be very hectic,” said Lynn Medford, a teacher in the program until this year. “They are going to have to do twice the work.”

Medford said the daily small group and one-on-one interaction was important to the students.

“If you work with them everyday you see where their weakness is and can figure out the best way to teach that child,” Medford said.

Medford has been moved to another open position at the school, and therefore, didn’t lose her job. This type of reshuffling went on across the school system, moving teachers who would otherwise be laid-off into positions vacated by those retiring.

Cuts far-reaching

Other Western North Carolina school districts are struggling with a drop in personnel, though more discreetly than the Haywood system. As teachers and staff leave through retirement or to take other jobs, the positions are either frozen or existing teachers who would otherwise be laid-off move into the open jobs.

“For the past year and a half, as people have retired or resigned, we have not filled that position unless we have to,” said Gwen Edwards, finance director for Jackson County Schools.

According to Edwards, any elective — like vocational education, for example — is on the chopping block when it comes to having someone to teach it. Also vacant in the Jackson system are three assistant principal spots; a receptionist position in the central office; and a bookkeeper at the high school, to name a few.

While these jobs have been cut, at least temporarily, the responsibilities that come with them remain — and are heaped on the plate of teachers and staff.

“The work is kind of split up between people, so it’s a little more work for everyone,” Edwards says.

Next door, Macon County Schools is dealing with its own share of cuts. Again, actual layoffs were avoided by a hiring freeze over the past year. The freeze applied not just to electives, but positions for required subjects.

“We haven’t filled any positions since January, but we do know time’s running out and there will have to be teachers in those classrooms,” Moore said.

Moore said the system has advertised and is currently hiring. But with every position, there’s a catch. Each contract is equipped with a clause that lets new hires know their position “is contingent upon a favorable budget,” Moore says.

With the budget finally passed and signed last week, administrators have mere days to weigh some heavy options before the school year starts.

“We’re going to have to make decisions that are pretty big, pretty soon, and pretty quick,” Moore said.

“With everything changing so much at the state level, it was really hard to make a budget,” agreed Gwen Edwards, finance director of Jackson County schools.

Adding to the challenge is that much of the budget is discretionary — meaning the state left it up to the local districts to decide what to cut.

“Instead, they’re going to make the local board of education the bad guy. We’re going to decide where to make those cuts,” Moore said.

Proposed cuts to the state budget have threatened after school care for middle school students, with programs in Canton, Franklin, Bryson City and Sylva already shut down or in jeopardy of closing.

As a result, middle school students who have benefited from adult supervision after school could end up home alone in the afternoons.

The after school program was funded through the N.C. Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which could face a $33 million cut — or 20 percent of its total budget. The cut would claim $5.7 million in grants given out through the Support Our Students program, which funds after school care and summer programs at low to no cost for about 14,000 students statewide.

Local responses to the budget cuts have ranged from resignation to resolve.

When Susan Waldorf, a former coordinator of the program in Franklin, heard of the proposed budget cuts she wrote her state senator and governor in search of additional funding to keep the program running. But the grants they found amounted to $5,000 or $6,000, which was miniscule compared to the $77,000 they had been receiving from the state.

The after school program in Franklin had 45 children on the roll, with an average of 20 students attending. Waldorf said the SOS program provided valuable homework help, gave kids a chance to do arts and crafts, and brought in outside speakers who talked about their careers and experiences. The main focus was to encourage students to stay in school and provide supervision during a critical development period.

“You see a body of a growing teen, but they’re still kids,” said Waldorf. “They’re still not wise enough to be turned loose for three hours.”

Ginger Middleton said her 12-year-old daughter Breanna Hill will undoubtedly miss the program in Franklin, which awarded Breanna with a Wii last year for her stellar attendance. Middleton is now exploring multiple options, including possibly having Breanna dropped off at her workplace for two hours after school.

“I know Breanna would rather be in SOS with her friends,” said Middleton. “She really misses it.”

Middleton said it would be difficult to start paying for a program similar to SOS since she already has to pay for Breanna’s younger sibling’s childcare.

Meanwhile, Jackson County already cut its SOS program last year due to budget cuts, and Swain County is also looking for alternative means to keep the after school service afloat.

Steve Claxton, community schools coordinator at Swain County, hopes to find grants that may help them continue the SOS Program at Swain County Middle School. They had received $75,000 from the state through SOS grants and charged an “extremely minimal” fee or provided scholarships for the service.

He said if the program isn’t kept alive, there may be some dire consequences.

“I can see test scores going down and higher dropout rates in high school,” he said. “These kids are struggling. They’re really not at the age that they need to be left home alone.”

William Lassiter, director of Communications at the Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, said SOS is one of 27 programs that could potentially be cut, including long-term youth development centers, group homes, and therapeutic wilderness homes for kids.

“The cuts will be very painful for our department,” he said. “If it were up to us, we wouldn’t make any cuts.”

Lassiter said that since most juvenile crimes occur between 3 to 6 p.m., that’s the time kids need the supervision most.

Keeping it going

A vestige of the SOS program in Haywood County is being kept alive, albeit in a new home in a martial arts studio in Canton.

Chris Lowe, former SOS advisor in Western North Carolina and coordinator at the program in Canton Middle School, said he decided to continue the summer program, even without the local school system’s backing.

“We were asked to call parents and tell them until we got our budget fixed, not to bring the kids. I declined the option,” said Lowe. “No, we made a commitment to these kids to operate the summer program, and that’s what we’ll do.”

Lowe wanted to continue to hold the program at Canton Middle School, but the school requires a $1 million liability policy for external groups who want to operate on school premises.

“It is a great program and Mr. Lowe has done a wonderful job, but we don’t sponsor programs that we do not fund,” said Haywood County’s Associate Superintendent Bill Nolte. “It would be like us being responsible for every childcare program in the county.”

With the school counted out as an option, Lowe turned to Jeremy Sears, who offered the use of his Academy of Martial Arts in Canton — for free. Lowe said the plan is to seek additional funding and reach out to the community to hopefully continue the service in the fall. As of now, he hasn’t changed the $50 a week fee for the 25 kids who have showed up to the program this summer.

“It wouldn’t be fair to go to parents and say ‘Hey, we got the boot, fork over the cash,’” said Lowe. “In spite of budget cuts, kids and families still need a place to go.”

Haywood County Schools is going through its own budget woes, with a loss of 14 teachers, 18 teacher assistants, a central office of student services director, two assistant principals, three custodians, and three secretaries this year. While Associate Superintendent Nolte acknowledges the need for an after school service for middle school kids, he said there simply is no additional funding to support it.

Lowe has changed the name of the Haywood program to My Sunshine, a company he founded with business partner Deborah Jackson this week.

Those who would like to contribute to My Sunshine may contact Deborah Jackson at 828.734.2115 or send donations to 129 Main Street, Canton, NC 28716.

The Swain County School District has terminated a popular program that emphasized science and math education, offered students smaller classes and helped combat the system’s high dropout rate.

The three-year-old School of Applied Science, Math and Technology was axed last month, despite having two more years of grant funding left. It had 160 students out of 600 at the high school.

The SASMT got a five-year grant from the N.C. New Schools Foundation, which funds programs that offer an alternative approach to traditional high school curriculum.

While the program didn’t cost Swain schools anything thanks to the grant funding, that grant would run out in two more years and the school system would have to shoulder the cost of about $52,000 annually. Administrators felt it would be impossible for them to come up with the money, and opted to throw in the towel sooner rather than later.

“We studied our options for over six months before we made that decision,” said Regina Ash, head of instruction for the Swain County Schools system. “We studied options, we argued about it. This was not something we took lightly. It was not a first choice, but with the budget going the way it is going we felt this was the best option for us.”

The alternative style of learning offered by the SASMT proved popular. Few students left the program, and it boasted an extremely low dropout rate — only one pupil in three years. A review commissioned by the New Schools Foundation gave the SASMT high marks in October 2008, finding that, “achievement has been consistently above district averages in all core subjects.”

“You in essence are closing down a program that has proven to be very effective,” said Sam Houston, president and CEO of the North Carolina Science, Math and Technology Education Center.

While Houston said he cannot speak to the school’s situation, he questioned any decision to terminate the program before the grant ran out.

“It would be wise for them to continue for the next two years,” he said.

The SASMT principal, Jeff Payne, expressed disappointment in the program’s termination.

“We hate to see it going away,” Payne said. “We feel like we were successful, but it’s just one of those things that we hope to learn from the experience.”

The high school has pledged to incoporate the education principles from the special science and math program into all classrooms school wide.

The wrong equation?

The success of the SASMT lay partly in its small size, which helped cultivate an intimate learning environment.

The program operated like a school within a school, with students in the same building but segregated from the regular student body for most of their classes, enjoying smaller class size and a more intimate setting.

“It’s building the relationship on a deeper level, so that the teachers know the kids, their problems, and their families,” said Ash. “When kids and teachers know each other better, they both perform better. The depth of understanding helps the relationship on both ends.”

But with all their perks, small classes in an underfunded, rural school district like Swain’s present a host of challenges. Already in Swain, there aren’t enough teachers to go around. The SASMT was sharing teachers with Swain County High School, and with its multiple small classes was stretching teaching resources even further.

“As a small school, the quota of teachers is small and insufficient to cover even the core subjects for all students,” noted the New Schools review.

Limited teaching resources proved to be a fatal blow to the SASMT.

“We started splitting those groups up, and we didn’t have the teacher resources to do it the way they’re supposed to be done,” Payne said.

The school district would have had to hire additional positions as required by the SASMT, including a principal and guidance counselor — a move the system likely couldn’t afford when the time came.

“The problem is they require you to have a separate principal and a separate guidance counselor,” said Steve Claxton, community schools coordinator for the district. “We’re talking about very few students to do those things, and we didn’t see it being fiscally possible for us to continue to have two principals, and a guidance counselor just for (SASMT).”

Particularly, Claxton said, when the district is already facing the possibility of eliminating existing positions in its budget cutbacks.

“We’re looking at losing teachers. How are we going to come up with money to pay people that we don’t pay now?” he said.

But Houston says the benefits students reap from the program make the upfront cost worthwhile.

“You have a very small student population, so when you calculate the per pupil cost, it looks like they are terribly expensive,” Houston said. “But the truth is, the return on the investment is huge.”

While a lack of funding for new positions played a role in the termination of the SASMT, Payne believes small classes could be an inherently flawed approach at small, rural schools. That approach may have worked well in larger districts the New Schools Foundation first experimented with, but likely won’t play out the same way in smaller ones.

“They’ve tried to go to smaller schools, and that’s part of the problem — we’re already a small school to start with,” said Payne.

Even when the SASMT merge back into the rest of the student body, the student population of Swain High School will total about 600.

“I’d rather have a high school with 200, but when you start getting into those really large schools, then you’re looking at losing the relationship component,” Payne said. “Those are the schools that the new schools project will work better for.”

Ironically Payne believes that the small classes that made the SASMT work led to its downfall.

“It got worse and worse to be able to have those small classes, and in my opinion, the division of resources to different programs limited what people could actually do,” he said.

So while the New Schools Project may contain some beneficial ideas, some of them are impossible to apply at smaller schools, says Payne.

“It’s not the New Schools project’s fault that we don’t have the resources, but there’s only so much you can do with what you have.”

Math, science won’t disappear

Swain cut the SASMT at a time when an increasing importance is being placed on math, science and technological education. But the subjects weren’t a factor in the decision to end the program, said Claxton.

Instead, the additional cost the district would have to incur to continue the SASMT when its grant ran out was a deterrent.

“They’re expecting us to continue to run it, versus all the other programs already in place — things like athletics,” Claxton said.

But Payne says it’s more important than ever that students learn the subjects taught by the SASMT.

“Pick up any magazine, or go on-line, and look at what jobs are going to be needed in the next 20 years,” he said. “The world’s changing, and technology is a big part of it, and science and math are a part of that technology.”

Payne worries that those subjects won’t play as big of a role in the regular curriculum.

“It’s not going to be as big of a focus probably,” he said. “I think we had more emphasis, not just by giving them a couple more classes, but also by integrating those areas into their classes.”

Ash, though, assures that the school is making steps to incorporate those subjects into everyday classes, and make sure students know how to apply them in the outside world.

“Our teachers are embedding technology in their instruction, and when our kids are doing projects, they are using technology in presentations,” she said. “We’re making sure that the work they produce is more relevant and more connected with what they’ll be producing in the workplace.”

Plus, the district is emphasizing math and science education in the curriculum.

“We’ve been building our science and math program for a while, and trying to offer advanced courses for our students,” Ash said, like a yearlong Advanced Placement course that covers Physics and Pre-Calculus.

“We’ve learned a lot”

All in all, Swain County school officials say the SASMT was anything but a wash. In fact, the professional development it provided taught the district some valuable lessons and approaches it hopes to hold on to.

“We’ve learned a lot from it, and we’ll incorporate some of those things into the system next year,” Claxton said.

Payne tends to agree.

“A lot of the stuff we learned from this experience we’re going to keep,” he says. “Hopefully, students aren’t going to be missing much at all.”

Payne would like to see lasting change result from the SASMT concepts.

“I’m hopeful that we’ve learned a lot, and that we’re changing the culture of the whole high school and the way that teachers and students interact with one another,” he said.

The first Friday in February came with some bad news for the Swain County School District and systems around the state. Word came from Raleigh that school budgets would be cut by 7 percent in the upcoming fiscal year.

The Swain school system already trimmed costs by $75,000 in December when the state called on schools statewide to send back a small percent of their current budgets. Schools were bracing for more cutbacks , but didn’t know how much.

“In the beginning, they were saying between 2 and 7 percent, but realistically around 4 percent,” said Steve Claxton, community schools coordinator. “Now they’re saying no, it’s looking more drastic than we first projected.”

A worst case scenario could call for 7 percent budget cut, which would amount to $952,000. While the exact amount won’t be known for some time, administrators are bracing for some tough decisions.

“We’re going to take a pretty serious cut. That’s plain and simple,” said Claxton. “Everybody knows that. The revenues just aren’t there.”

Layoffs are now a very real possibility, and likely a necessity. Hopefully the school system can achieve a workforce reduction through attrition. For the past two years, between 15 and 17 teachers retired at the end of the school year. If the same scenario happened this year, the school could chose not to fill vacancies and naturally reduce the number of paid positions. But that won’t be the case.

“We don’t have those numbers this year, so it’s really concerning us,” said Claxton. “This year we’re looking at people if they even are qualified to retire.”

The school also loses a certain number of teachers every year who move to other counties. But if there aren’t enough teachers in that category, the school may have to broaden its scope, he said.

Talk of layoffs has caused a cloud to hang over the schools.

“It’s creating a real feeling of uneasiness,” said Claxton.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians has recently begun funding the school lunches for enrolled members of the tribe who attend school off the Qualla Boundary.

The tribe has funded the lunches of those who attend school on the reservation for years and decided it should do the same for the others. Cherokee students who attend school in Swain, Jackson, Haywood and Graham counties — either because they live in those communities or commute off the reservation for school by choice — now have their lunches paid for by the tribe.

Haywood County Schools Associate Superintendent Dr. Bill Nolte said he thinks it’s “very honorable” for the tribe to pay for the lunches and breakfasts. The tribe only pays for those who do not already receive free lunch through the federal government as a low income student.

The tribe began the program in most counties last spring, but Haywood County is just getting going with it because of the paperwork required, including identifying enrolled members.

The tribe simply reimburses the schools for the lunches. For instance, the tribe has paid Jackson County $23,858 so far this year for the lunches. There are 333 Cherokee students in the Jackson County school system, but 119 get free lunch already through the federal government, while the others are covered by the tribe.

Haywood County Schools Child Nutrition Director Sandy Brooks said she thinks all students should have their school lunches funded by the government, adding that students don’t pay for books or bus rides so why should they pay for lunch.

If student lunches were free it would be less hassle to run the school cafeteria because there would be less paperwork, Brooks said. Some urban school districts, from D.C. to Denver, have launched free breakfast as an incentive to get students to school on time every day, and found that it is working.

Director of the Cherokee Youth and Adult Education Program Pam Straughan said the Tribal Council passed a resolution last year to pay for students’ lunches off the reservation after parents from Graham County complained that their children had to pay for lunches while enrolled members who went to school on the reservation did not.

By Jennifer Garlesky • Staff Writer

As Macon County officials move forward with plans to build two new schools, community schools in Cowee, Iotla and Cullasaja could close their doors forever.