Changes for 2025 school year at Rock Hill Schools | Local education news

ROCK HILL, S.C. — Rock Hill Schools says it’s making administrative changes that will go into effect at the start of the 2025 school year. Officials explain the changes are happening so they can provide more funding for school-level positions instead.

This change was initiated at the June school board meeting when a motion was made to “a proposed budget to restructure the district office organizational chart – so additional funding could be directed to schools and classrooms instead of the district office.”

Following that motion, the school board decided to start “reorganizing” and “reducing force.”

School officials said to stay within the budget, the school board will pull or eliminate funding from district-level positions and refocus them on school-level positions.

While some teachers in the district are seeing pay raises, other positions are being “reorganized” or “reduced.”

“We know that in order to attract the best educators so our kids get a fantastic education, we have to pay them and pay them well,” school board chair Helene Miller said. “So, priority to pay a school-based staff rather than having a large district office staff was priority.”

So far, the district has confirmed the Virtual Academy option will not exist next school year and schools will be losing the Day Treatment Center – which is a short-term mental health treatment center for students.

The district has also confirmed they are looking to outsource some school therapists but didn’t confirm what organization they will be outsourcing from.

“We know this is important, it is a priority to us and we also know it’s not a budget-friendly sustainable option to continue doing things the way we’ve been doing them,” Lindsay Machack, the district’s executive director of communications and marketing, said. “So we are trying to make sure we can keep the service and still maintain the budget that we have.”

Parents in the community said they use the currently-available mental health resources and hate the idea of a potential change.

“So much less running around you have to do,” one parent told WCNC Charlotte. “You have to make it easy for the parents to get the help they can get. There’s so much added pressure as a parent when you have disabled kids. There’s so much more you have to take care of.”

“One of my children was suffering from severe anxiety at school because a teacher embarrassed them,” Sarah Horton, another parent with kids in the district, said. “The guidance counselor suggested the mental health counselor and it was so incredibly helpful.”

Horton added that “this [change] will certainly impact the students who need it.”

School board officials say these changes will be going into place starting in July of 2025 and more changes could be underway before that point.

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