Special Notice

Dear Parents,

We are writing to URGE you to support the Cherokee County Board of Education and our district in speaking out to our local legislative representatives in the Georgia General Assembly along with our Governor, Nathan Deal, who seeks to continue cut our school funding. These cuts have affected our children already. They are experiencing even larger classroom sizes, diminished learning opportunities, and reduced time in specials, such as Art and Music.

Our district has incurred state budget cuts in excess of $118 million over the past 8 years. For example, in 2004, the State cut Cherokee County School budget by $5.2 million. Each year we have had more money cut by the State for our Cherokee County Schools. In 2010-11, we lost $25.3 million and in 2011-12, we are losing $26.6 million and, and we are slated to lose the same $26.6 million again for 2012-13. When the State approved the opening of the Cherokee Charter Academy (CCA) in August, they provided over $10 million to the CCA and the rest of the state-funded charter schools, despite the Georgia Supreme Court ruling it unconstitutional, which resulted in an additional loss of approximately $3.1 million to our district. Our district had to absorb this additional shortage through larger class sizes, displaced teachers, and further reductions in elective classes for our children.  While our children were affected by these funding cuts, the children at the state-funded Charter School have these opportunities and others available to them such as Art, Music, Band, and Foreign Languages, not to mention smaller class sizes.

Our State has a Fair Share policy that requires school districts to pay no more than a maximum of 20% of our budget to assist lower income districts. However, for the past 3 years, our Fair Share amount has exceeded the 20% formula. This past year, we paid an additional $2.8 million over the 20% required by the state. Why are our legislators not upholding the 20% threshold? Imagine what our district could do with $2.8 million.

With the continued budget cuts which have led to our increased class sizes and loss of special classes, parents have become increasingly concerned about the future of our children and our district. As such, we believe our best solution is to voice our concerns to our elected state representatives in hopes that they will act upon our concerns when setting and passing future budgets. Our goal is to ask you to get involved and share your concern with these representatives. We know that there is strength in numbers and the elected officials should act on our behalf.

We are attaching the addresses of our local representatives and a copy of a letter that you may e-mail/mail to them with your concerns. We have attached this letter for your convenience, but feel free to write your own letter, if you choose. We are hoping that our representatives are inundated with letters, phone calls, and e-mails voicing our concerns. We trust that as elected officials, they will address these critical issues on our behalf.  We are also attaching our District’s 2012 Legislative Brochure and a recent article from a Town Hall meeting with Chip Rogers.  This January 12th meeting was attended by a room full of Cherokee County teachers asking him about these same concerns. These attachments provide additional information about these matters.

We hope you will join us in our efforts to support our teachers, administrators, and our district. If you have additional questions or concerns, please contact your school principal or school board member.

Thank you for your support.

HFES PTA

Cherokee Legislative Delegation

Calvin Hill and Chip Rogers are HFES’s representatives…if you only have  time to send to these 2, PLEASE DO, if you can send the letter to ALL—even better!

• Representative Letter
• Legislative Program Brochure
• Town Hall article