Several teachers won’t return to Lowndes County for next school year

LOWNDES COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – The Lowndes County School District has until April 12 to renew its employees, but several teachers won’t have the opportunity to renew their contracts.

Superintendent Lynn Wright said some changes in the district’s resources are behind the workforce reduction.

“We just had some situations that we weren’t counting on that has occurred. We have enough, I don’t want to necessarily call it fluff, but we tried to be as effective and as efficient as we can with the resources we have. But we’ve got some areas that we can make some cuts that we don’t feel like it will critically affect the performance of our students.”

Several factors are playing into the district’s teacher crunch for the upcoming school year.

“Due to a reduction in some of the ad valorem taxes that we were expecting, even though industry is doing great right now, it’s on an upswing, there’s been some things that have occurred that is beyond our control.”

One issue is less tax money coming in, but the district also has more money going out, and the result is going to be a little tightening of the belt.

“With the added expense of all of the construction that we have done, and we have a graduated payment program with the bond issue, so each year, based on what we were expecting our ad valorem taxes to be, the bond issue, our bond payment increases each year.”

Those losses are going to be felt in the classrooms.

“Right now, we will be looking at first-year teachers.”

Wright said 58 newly certified employees were hired this past year.

He also said the district doesn’t have much turnover from year to year, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all of those first-year teachers will be dismissed.

“We will probably have between forty, a little over forty teachers, that will be retiring or being transferred because we have some teachers, whose spouses are employed by the military and they will be moving off, or employed at some of the industry that we have here, and they may be transferred.”

Wright said those spots will have to be filled, and that means, some of those first-year teachers could slide into those vacancies.

“A lot of them will be coming back. We will probably end up losing a net of maybe, ten or fifteen of them and of those fifty-eight new employees, some of them were already not planning on coming back anyways, because they’re moving.”

Wright said although there will be cuts made, it won’t impact the statewide teacher pay raise.

He says state funds will cover the increases.