THOMASVILLE — The Grady County Board of Education approved a fiscal year 2011 budget plan during its March meeting Tuesday.

“This is just the beginning and gives us some tools to start working through the budget process,” Chairman Drew Pyrz said Wednesday.

“This is just a plan. We have the option of using any, all, or none of its proposed items. Our number one priority at this point is to not affect our jobs.”

The system expects to see a decrease in state revenue and the local digest from this fiscal year, but the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax III enables the system to remove $675,000 in expenditures from the FY2011 local/state budget, according to the plan outline.

The FY2011 budget plan outlines a total proposed reduction of $1.43 million to $1.75 million.

Plan items are not prioritized, Superintendent Dr. Tommy Pharis said Wednesday.

These include:

• reduce the number of certificated personnel by 15-20 — $750,000 to $1 million;

• reduce classified personnel by a minimum of 10-15 — $150,000 to $225,000;

• maintain current hiring freeze procedures;

• make additional cuts to allotments, programs, services and line items — $400,000 minimum;

• do not replace the current local supplement and continue the current number of work days for all personnel — $50,000;

• reduce extended day costs — $80,000.

The plan outlines a budget adoption in September.

“We are trying to reduce personnel, primarily through attrition, and are making deep cuts into other budget line items to hopefully protect our primary resource, personnel, from future additional cuts,” Pharis explained Wednesday.

“We plan to start the school year with the current supplement levels for teachers, and the current number of work days for all personnel. By cutting other budget items, a goal is to avoid additional salary cuts.”

If the system does have additional revenue, the plan outlines these will be used to increase reserve and return funds to allotments, programs, services and salaries.

If there is a revenue shortfall, the system will decrease work year beyond current days, make additional reductions to allotments, programs, services and/or salaries, reduce reserve or implement reduction in force at mid-year, if necessary, according to the plan.