WFHB FireHouse Broadcasting

With a cut in state funding compounding an already serious financial shortfall, the board of the Monroe County Community School Corporation has voted unanimously to cut $5.8 million from the local school budget. With personnel accounting for ninety percent of expenses, local jobs are lost - the equivalent of 88 full-time positions, mostly teachers but also librarians, athletic coaches, and many more. The cuts include closing Aurora High School, Bloomington’s alternative high school, and incorporating its program into a facility at Bloomington High School North. Local elementary schools are taking the biggest hit. More than four hours of desperate pleas from parents, teachers, and students had no effect on the final cuts, which were passed almost exactly as originally proposed. Superintendent J.T. Coopman rattles off the long list of reductions with the tone of a death knell, and for many of the nearly four hundred people who showed up, that’s exactly what it is. Recorded on-location at Bloomington High School North on February 19, 2010.