Wlaf1450Director of Schools Jennifer Fields said this year’s budget had been “grueling”
TOP PHOTO: Friday’s BOE special called meeting drew a crowd to the upper courtroom of the courthouse.
By Charlotte Underwood
JACKSBORO, TN (WLAF)- Campbell County schools lost a total of eight non-tenured teachers due to budget cuts this coming school year.
The Campbell County Board of Education passed its 2025-2026 budget at a special-called meeting held on Friday at noon. This year’s budget faced a $2.1 million deficit, leaving BOE members to make hard decisions about what to cut to balance the budget.
After the meeting on Friday, WLAF spoke with Director of Schools Jennifer Fields who said this year’s budget had been “grueling”.
“It has been grueling, because we want to serve all students equitably and this is not the most equitable choice, but it is what we had to do to balance the budget and unfortunately our students will suffer because of it,” Director Fields said.
The BOE has held multiple budget and finance committee meetings over the past two months, trying to find out where cuts could be made.
After a less than 10-minute meeting on Friday, BOE members passed the budget in a six to four vote, with BOE members Sharon Ridenour, Randy Heatherly, Brandon Johnson, and Brent Lester casting “no” votes. Board chairman Jeffrey Miller, and BOE members Crystal Creekmore, Ronnie Lasley, Lisa Fields, Jamie Wheeler and Ryne Cummins voted “yes”.
Deputy Finance Director and Budget analyst Richard Terry presented the board with the revised 141 fund and revised 142 funds, which included some changes from the last budget meeting. These changes included combining some classes at fifth district schools in order to find funds to keep the assistant band director position and to hire 10 teaching assistants.
“The budget committee, Director Fields, myself, Mr. (Jeff) Marlow, Mr. Terry, we have spent weeks, if not months on this trying to find a solution; I think we are close and that we can hopefully get this passed today,” said BOE chair Jeffrey Miller at the start of Friday’s meeting.
Miller made the motion for the budget to be approved, and Budget and Finance Committee Chairman Crystal Creekmore seconded the motion.
BOE member Brent Lester spoke up to confirm that with the revised 141 budget numbers, that Campbell County High School was still going to lose an English teacher. He was told that was correct.
Board of Education Chairman Miller pointed out that even with the cuts, the school system would be hiring 10 teaching assistants to replace interventionists.
“The revised budget from the other night, there is going to be some combined classes at White Oak and Wynn, the band instructor will be added back in and there will be 10 new teaching assistants brought on for intervention purposes replacing interventionists,” Miller said.
Cuts were made across the school system, including the combining of classes at Wynn Elementary School and White Oak Elementary School. Four classes at White Oak Elementary School will be combined into two classes and two classes at Wynn will be combined into one. There will be no combined classes at Elk Valley.
“That will be a staffing decision left up to the principal’s discretion,” Director Fields explained after the meeting.
One position at Wynn will be eliminated, because a teacher retired and that class will be combined with another and one position at White Oak also had a teacher retire and so that position was abolished as well, resulting in a combined class. Another teacher at White Oak was not hired back, and that class will be combined with another class, according to Director Fields.
Campbell County High School will lose a Spanish teacher, as well as an English teacher and an assistant principal. The Spanish teacher was non-tenured. The assistant principal will be going to the alternative school and the assistant principal position at CCHS will be abolished.
“He (Daniel Sexton) was an asset to the high school, and they will feel that loss,” Director Fields said after the meeting.
One of the English teachers at CCHS is retiring, and that position will be abolished.
However, the assistant band director position was added back in after school board members heard from numerous band students, parents and the like on how important it was to keep the assistant band director position, which not only serves CCHS, but also LaFollette Middle and Jacksboro Middle Schools.
After Friday’s meeting was over, WLAF briefly caught up with assistant band director Tiffany Braden, who said she was overwhelmed by all the support, and that she appreciated all the phone calls and messages that were sent on her behalf. She said, of course, she was sad about losing her job because “band is like a family,” but that she had not expected the outpouring of support that was sent on her behalf.
“I never expected any of this; I was not expecting all this, I had no idea it was even going on, all these students and parents were standing up for. I thank God, I thank the kids, the parents for voicing all their concerns. I thank the school board members for having a change of heart and deciding to keep my position, and I plan to do everything in my power to make sure it is not something that they regret. I will continue to keep doing the best I can for these kids and keep the program building as we go,” Braden said.
Other budget cuts include ten teaching interventionists will be returning to the classroom; however, the school system will hire 10 teaching assistants to work in intervention and replace those interventionists, according to Miller.
“The meeting the other night, did not have the 10 teaching assistants being hired; in order to do that, some classes had to be combined to get funding for that. No teaching assistants are being lost, and we are adding ten more to go in place of the ten interventionists,” Miller said.
The certified interventionists returning to the classrooms are tenured teachers. Some are non-tenured teachers that will not be returning to those positions, some were vacated with teachers retiring,” Director Fields said.
LaFollette Middle School’s library position will be reduced to part-time, with that teacher also teaching English Language Arts the other half the day.
Seven academic coaching positions were cut, with the remaining four academic coaches to serve all schools in the district. Those seven academic coaches will return to the classroom.
A school counselor position will be cut from the fifth district, and those schools will go back on the regular rotation of having a traveling counselor; it will be the same with a Physical Education instructor in the fifth district as a P.E. teaching position was cut at White Oak and will now be filled by a teacher that travels amongst those schools.
After the meeting was concluded on Friday, BOE members Brandon Johnson and Randy Heatherly spoke with WLAF about voting “no” on the budget.
Johnson said ultimately, he appreciated his fellow board members and that he felt there had been a lot of compromise from where the board started to where it finished with passing the budget.
“I do think we were able to negotiate on some things and get some things done, but ultimately the budget still wasn’t at the point that I wanted it. The fact that at Campbell County High School, for example, we are losing a vice principal and an English teacher, to me that is unacceptable, we need to continue fighting for those positions. I wish that we could have had more conversations and tried to find more solutions to retain those positions, but ultimately, we ran kind of ran out of time to find solutions to those problems,” Johnson said, adding that he wished he could have voted for the budget, but “in its current state, he could not.”
Heatherly said he could not support the budget as it was, because he felt like it affected his “district and the entire district’s ability to perform at a higher academic level”.
“Because of those types of cuts and academics being number one in my book, I could not support it,” Heatherly said. He also said he hoped his fellow board members would vote for his suggestion of hiring a professional consulting firm for next year’s budget.
This will come to a vote on Tuesday at the BOE’s regularly scheduled meeting at 6 pm.
“In the event that we do approve to hire a consulting firm, that they will be able to give us some insight and maybe see stuff from a different standpoint that we’re not seeing it that will give us an ability to make cuts where we need to make them that are best for our district academically and that we can spend our buck the best that we can,” Heatherly said.
Campbell County High School Principal Ben Foust said he felt disappointed by the budget that was passed and that CCHS brought in the most funding for the district and also had to take the hardest hits in cuts this budget session.
“Like I said before, we are the flagship school of Campbell County, when things go well, the district goes well, when things are not going well, we’re going to be picked apart. When the numbers as far as students go are pretty still the same as they were last year and we are losing that many teachers, it will affect how we will do things, but that’s what we are there to do, to support our kids and make sure they are successful. I just wish that the people who are being voted in to make these decisions would look at this. I know they talk about being fiscally conservative, and they have talked about being good stewards of tax payers money, but at the end of the day, when you look at where money is being lost and money is being gained, Campbell County High School is earning almost a million dollars every year, and we never get to keep that; we took the biggest cuts in the whole district and we are also earning the most money, so I think that imbalance there tells it all. But we will continue doing what we do, serving kids and serving our community and we are hopeful that we make everybody proud,” Foust said.
The school’s budget now goes on to the County Commission to pass at its June meeting, then on to the state for final approval. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-06/09/2025-6AM)