KBIA

Columbia School District facing budget cuts COLUMBIA, MO (KBIA) - The Columbia School District is well on its way to budget cuts. Proposed cuts totaling about $5.6 million were discussed at the District's Finance Committee meeting Wednesday. Of the $5.6 million in proposed cuts, about $4 million will be in personnel, with 75 full-time positions potentially being eliminated.

Superintendent Dr. Chris Belcher says these positions will come from teachers, administrators and other staff.

"These are along the same lines that we released about two month ago as projected. Then from that we continued to take input and so forth and have adjusted them somewhat, but it's along the same basic premise."

Belcher says that a projected ten percent reduction in state funding helped lead to possible cuts.

"As I tell people, you can't run 100 percent of a program on 90 percent of the budget. So we, like schools across the state and across the nation, are simply having to determine which programs or things we want to reduce in order to have a balanced budget."

The school board must approve the proposed cuts at its meeting Monday. Belcher says the positions would not be eliminated until the 2010-2011 school year. © Copyright 2010, KBIA