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Guilford School Board Approves Budget That Incudes TA Cuts, Sports Fee

A Guilford County Schools classroom. File photo. KERI BROWN/WFDD

A new budget for Guilford County Schools will mean fewer teacher assistants and a $45 fee to play sports.

The Guilford County Board of Education voted Thursday to pass a roughly $664 million operating budget for the 2017-18 school year. That's about a 2.5 percent increase over the previous year's budget.

The budget was approved on an 8-0 vote, with one board member absent.

The Greensboro News & Record reports the budget plan calls for 51 of the district's nearly 500 teaching assistant positions to be cut.

It also institutes a $45 per year athletic fee that can be waived for economically disadvantaged students.

Another measure calls for the closing of High School Ahead Academy.

School officials say money saved by closing the academy will to go toward expanding opportunities for students to take online courses.

Neal Charnoff joined 88.5 WFDD as Morning Edition host in 2014. Raised in the Catskill region of upstate New York, he graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1983. Armed with a liberal arts degree, Neal was fully equipped to be a waiter. So he prolonged his arrested development bouncing around New York and L.A. until discovering that people enjoyed listening to his voice on the radio. After a few years doing overnight shifts at a local rock station, Neal spent most of his career at Vermont Public Radio. He began as host of a nightly jazz program, where he was proud to interview many of his idols, including Dave Brubeck and Sonny Rollins. Neal graduated to the news department, where he was the local host for NPR's All Things Considered for 14 years. In addition to news interviews and features, he originated and produced the Weekly Conversation On The Arts, as well as VPR Backstage, which profiled theater productions around the state. He contributed several stories to NPR, including coverage of a devastating ice storm. Neal now sees the value of that liberal arts degree, and approaches life with the knowledge that all subjects and all art forms are connected to each other. Neal and his wife Judy are enjoying exploring North Carolina and points south. They would both be happy to never experience a Vermont winter again.

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