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.
