BROKFIELD, Ohio - Brookfield Schools already faced a $500,000 shortfall when voters in November turned down a proposed five year one percent income tax.
Now the district has been informed of new cuts in state funding.
"Our treasurer received notification last week that an additional $200,000 was cut in funding," said Brookfield Superintendent Tim Paxton.
The superintendent says this latest cut in foundation funding comes despite Ohio's new casino tax adjustment for education.
"While the casino tax was supposed to help schools districts, we're not really seeing the benefit of that," Paxton said.
Last year the district was forced to put a sharp pencil to its budget and made severe cuts that totaled a half a million dollars, including across the board staff cuts and programs for students.
"We cut all our home economics classes, we cut out an art teacher, we cut a language arts teacher and we reduced a special needs teacher," Saxton said.
The district is now looking at going back to the voters in May to raise $600,000 to hopefully restore those cuts and off-set the new cuts by the state.
"That amount of 600,000 is about 4.85 mills of property tax," Paxton said.
Without new funding the deficit will only get bigger and the district could ultimately see intervention by the state.
Brookfield's last operating levy was passed in 1995.
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