Over the past 14 years, Amherst County Public Schools has had 81.5 positions removed from its budget because of funding cuts, a point Superintendent William Wells reported to the county’s school board recently as the division prepares for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
A recent memo to Wells from Assistant Superintendent Dana Norman and Jim Gallagher, chief human resources officer, states they recommend the division place a priority on adding back positions in the operational budget for 2023-24.
The data is being brought to the forefront of discussion based on the knowledge that at the end of the 2023-24 school year, which runs July 2023 through June 2024, all federal stimulus money that poured into the division in response to the COVID-19 pandemic will have been spent down to zero. Funding from several federal grants have allowed the division in 2020 to hire personnel based on a one-year contract to fulfill …