By Rupert Howell

School officials will have to trim over $100,000 per month from expenditures of the South Panola School District for the remainder of the budget year due to recent cutbacks at the state level, trustee board members learned Tuesday night at their monthly board meeting.

The revised budget takes the Mississippi Adequate Education Program funding from $20,610,149 to $19,778,132. A portion of that difference, approximately $225,00, came from recalculating budgeted figures with actual figures once the school year was under way and would have been made during any year. A $660,000 cut was taken from that revised figure.

While some districts are facing red ink and cash flow problems, South Panola’s “rainy day fund will keep us out of the ditch,” according to Superintendent Dr. Keith Shaffer.

School districts are advised to keep a five-percent rainy day fund.

School board president Lygunnah Bean commented the rainy day fund suggestion must not be well enforced while noting that other Mississippi school districts are in potential financial trouble with the 3.2 percent projected cut.

Shaffer said the school district could absorb the cut and that he would sit down with building level directors and “find out where we can save…”

Financial Director Suzanne Covington told trustees that the district would not be able to put money into the capital improvements fund as in the past, but that funds for an addition to Pope School were still available.

Trustees were also told that cutbacks would most likely continue into the next school year with Bean stating, “It’s going to be difficult down the road.”

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Shaffer said of the funding cuts.