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ALBANY, GA --
Planning for the 2012/2013 Dougherty County Board of Education budget is underway.

Due to the slow economy the school district’s financial committee already knows next year’s local and state revenue will fall $14.5 million short of what was expected.

Financial director for the school system Kenneth Dyer has plans to combat this shot fall, "If we have a class with 12 and another class with 13, our maximum(class size) maybe 30, so we could collapse two classes and still be under our maximum class size."

Eliminating classes does not transfer into letting go staff. The school has a number of open positions, instead of filling those vacancies, the school would condense classes that are under the maximum class size, reducing the number of classes and new teachers need.

The school district is trying their best to keep programs such as art and gym in school, and as of now they are not planning to cut those programs. They are however talking about reducing programs that aren’t currently in every school, such as foreign languages, by compressing it into one state funded location.