Haleyville, AL: SPED 'needs increasing as well as numbers'
HALEYVILLE - A possibly grim financial picture is being painted for Haleyville City Schools in the next few years, due to an expected significant drop in state and federal funding, meaning the system will have to dip more into local monies in order to fund personnel and services.
“We are going to be relying heavily on local monies this year,” HCS Chief School Financial Officer Candy Marbutt advised school board members at the second of two budget hearings Monday, Sept. 14. “We are going to anticipate that we are going to stay strong in that local revenue.
“Based on current projections, our federal and state revenues are lower than they were last year,” Marbutt added. “We’re hoping that our local revenues will continue to be strong, to pick that up.“We are going to monitor extremely closely all of our spending,” Marbutt continued to emphasize. “If it’s not in our budget, we are going to really think about it.
“I have told some of the directors this may be the year we have to start telling people no,” Marbutt emphasized. “(Fiscal year) 2028 is going to be the year that everybody struggles because lots and lots of monies are running out.
“(Fiscal year) 2027 is going to be tight. I’m afraid 2028 is going to be even worse,” Marbutt informed the board. “It’s going to be tough.”. . .
Special education a major concern
Currently, HCS has 275 special needs students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, Marbutt said.
“That is 16 more than we had last fall and that grows every day,” Marbutt reminded.
“The needs are increasing as well as the numbers.”
“Of those special needs, we have 34 that require transportation. Fifty-four (students) require full-time adult support,” Marbutt explained.
“We have 13 (special needs students) in pre-K. We have 33 in our focus behavior classroom at the elementary school. We have two at the middle school. They have a full-time person all day every day, then we have six at the high school,” Marbutt explained.
“One student requires counseling, 34 require occupational therapy, two have to have physical therapy and 53 require special education plus additional speech,” Marbutt continued.
“You can see the needs are there,” she added. “We have three contracted teachers in special ed and two speech language pathologists. “We have three contracted paraprofessionals and 19 full-time paraprofessionals,” Marbutt continued. “With each year, the needs are just increasing.”
Some of the intervention programs used for special education include Aspire, used at all three schools to help fill learning gaps, Marbutt said. A grant is also used for transition skills, to help with the greenhouse, including a poultry program, she added. . . .
“You also have to pull out pre-school because pre-school doesn’t count in ADM,” Bishop also reminded.
“Although we have 13 special needs students in pre-K, we don’t get to count those in our ADM,” Marbutt explained. “We don’t get funding for them for transportation, for child nutrition. We don’t get to count Pre-K at all.”
The budget for special education for next year is projected to be around $785,000, which is $88,000 less than the amount with which the school system is currently working, Marbutt emphasized.
“We’ve got more students,” Marbutt reminded. “We are a year in arrears, and the funding has dropped. We didn’t get as much state and federal monies in special education.”
The grants that HCS received for special education for fiscal year 2023 were $877,774; for FY 2024: $779,315; FY 2025: $534,000, and the current year $720,060, Marbutt pointed out. That total in grants HCS received for special education amounted to $2,911,149, according to Marbutt.
This year, over $1 million grants have been written, but “we know we will not get all of that,” said Marbutt.
“What we don’t get, we’ll have to pick up (from local funds),” Marbutt stressed. “Just keep that in mind. We’ll have to find a way to pay for these.” Bishop explained that because funding is going down, more system.
s are applying for these grants, which makes the process more competitive.
“Would we look at dropping the pre-K program?” board member Chad Tidwell asked.
“That would be almost impossible,” Bishop responded. “It could also be very detrimental.”
Marbutt said pre-K has been funded through grants.
“I was just asking,” Tidwell said. “If you have to start cutting...”
“If it wasn’t something that was sustainable, you couldn’t continue going in the hole,” Bishop remarked. “I think we will continue receiving our money for pre-K.” . . .
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