Southwest Sullivan Schools makes budget cuts, lays off employees

SULLIVAN — A major decrease in Sullivan County’s assessed value is having a significant impact on Southwest School Corp., which is laying off 16 employees, including four teachers and 12 instructional aides, according to Superintendent Chris Stitzle.

The Southwest Sullivan school board finalized the personnel cuts Wednesday.

Those laid off “were all valuable individuals that had a positive influence on students, so whenever you reduce your staff, especially quality staff, it’s not a great feeling,” Stitzle said Thursday.

Other cost-cutting measures will impact instructional subscriptions as well as some of the maintenance/custodial services provided by Sodexo; the district outsources those services.

There also will be savings in administration.

Dustin Hitt, who has been Sullivan Middle School principal for many years, will be the new superintendent at Northeast Sullivan schools.

Stitzle said he’s moved people around in administration and did not make any new hires in administration, which will also save the district money.

“We’re looking at everything for savings,” Stitzle said.

The budget cuts are necessary because of a $122 million drop in assessed value, which means an increase in tax rates.

When the state Department of Local Government Finance informed him earlier this year, they told him “it’s kind of a historic drop,” Stitzle said.

The assessed value dropped from about $702 million to about $580 million.

For Southwest Sullivan Schools, it increases circuit breaker losses in the operations fund by more than $700,000. “It almost tripled, from $400,000 to $1.1 million,” he said.

The district has money in its Rainy Day fund and a “nice balance” in the education fund, he said, “but when you lose $700,000, you’ve really got to start making plans now. You can’t wait until you run out of money.”

He added, “We aren’t close to being out of money. But we needed to start making some reductions in our spending.”

The AV drop is affecting other units of local government as well that rely on tax dollars, not just Southwest Sullivan schools.

“It’s something we have to work through and we’ll work through it and provide a good quality education for everybody,” he said.

The district also has been impacted by some enrollment loss, and “that affected my decision-making on who got laid off,” Stitzle said.

He noted that two of the four teachers who lost their jobs have found other employment.

While the circuit breaker losses directly affect the operations budget, as the education budget is state-funded, “It’s an overall package,” Stitzle said.

Despite the cuts, “We’ll work through it together and we’ll make it work,” he said.

Much of the drop in assessed value relates to Hallador Energy’s acquisition of Hoosier Energy’s one-gigawatt Merom Generating Station in Sullivan County, Stitzle explained.