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Dain Butler
Some federal COVID-19 pandemic relief money has been identified that will let the Alamance-Burlington School System close its funding shortfall without any layoffs or pay cuts, the school system’s superintendent said Thursday.
Working with Alamance County officials and state legislators, officials found $4.6 million that can be used, but it will require closing Alamance Virtual School at the end of the current school year, Superintendent Dain Butler said in an email.
That would also allow the school system to return to the county $250,000 that the Alamance County Board of Commissioners had voted to provide the school system to help with expenses for the remainder of the school year, Butler said.
Butler plans to present details of the plan to the Alamance-Burlington Board of Education at its meeting on Monday, Feb 26, at 6:30 p.m.
“The current principal (at Alamance Virtual School) will be reassigned to an open principalship in the summer, and all virtual teachers will be assisted in being assigned to a school with a vacancy that matches their teaching license for next year” if the school board approves of the plan, Butler said.
Butler’s email hit the virtual school’s teachers hard, teacher Jordan Loomis said in an interview.
“It was a shock to us all,” he said.
The virtual school was originally created in response to COVID-19 using the federal relief money, which expires this year, but Loomis disputed Butler contention that the school originally “was intended to end when these funds expire in 2024.”
“We were hired with the impression it was not just going to be during the pandemic,” Loomis said.
Friday’s school board meeting had been called before Butler’s announcement for the board to discuss previously announced options for closing ABSS’s $3.2 million shortfall, which officials have said resulted from rising utility costs, increased staff benefits, substitute teacher costs, fluctuations in insurance costs, rising charter school costs and some non-teaching positions that are staffed over the state allotment.
