Sparse Crowd at Public Hearing on Bibb Schools’ Budget

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – There are more than 150,000 Bibb County citizens, but only a few of them showed up at Monday night’s public hearing on the school district’s budget.

The district has to overcome an $18.7 million deficit.  Some school consolidations and mergers were considered, but those were pushed back until later on after public outcry.

Still, the system plans to cut several positions throughout the district and classroom sizes are expected to increase.

Interim superintendent, Dr. Steve Smith, says people may not have shown up Monday because a tentative budget was already approved last week.

“On the front end of the process, we probably need to have some public forums where we get more input prior to formulating the budgets,” says Smith, “as opposed to waiting until after we present the tentative budget, and then hearing the response.”

Smith says another reason turnout was low might be because there’s no tax increase in the budget.

Bibb Schools’ Listening Sessions

If you want to voice your concerns over the budget or anything else within the school district, the interim superintendent will host two listening sessions this week.

“You’ll have parents, you’ll have the business community, and you’ll have some students there,” says Smith.  “I’m primarily interesting in knowing what are we doing in the school system that we shouldn’t be doing and what are we not doing in the school system that we should be doing.”

Both sessions will be at Central High School in Macon. The first one is Tuesday night at 6:30 and the other is Thursday morning at 9:30.

The board is expected to adopt a final budget on June 24.