By Shelly Baskin
Dawson Springs, KY – Hopkins County's Dawson Springs Independent School district faces significant funding cuts in the upcoming year. School officials expect as much as an 8.8% cut in federal funds and about a 2% cut in state funds. Dawson Springs Superintendent Alexis Seymore says the cuts hurt the already under funded Special Education Programs the most. But she says the reductions were not completely unexpected.
"You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to know that we were not going to get through this year without a cut. So when we started doing our budgeting I instructed our finance officer to act as if we were going to get a 5% across the board cut," she says.
Seymore says even though the cuts exceeded what they planned for, they shouldn't have a problem making it through the rest of this year. She says the real trouble will come when they're making next year's budget and have to decide what the district's 700 students can do without.