ATHENS COUNTY, Ohio — Voters in Alexander Local School District twice rejected renewal of a 1% income tax, in 2023 and 2024. The district says those losses are behind a decision to cut funding for a coordinator of talented and gifted education for the 2025–26 school year.
“Our levy failed, so we’ve got to reduce some of our spending,” Superintendent William Hampton told the Independent. “This was an area we felt we could reduce some of our spending. In talking about it, many of the services that we used to provide still exist.”
In the 2024–25 school year, Alexander contracted with a TAG coordinator through the Ohio Valley Educational Services Center at a cost of $60,000 for 120 days of service.
Records from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce show that the district received around $20,000 from the state to support the position through June 9.
According to a public records request fulfilled by Alexander Local Schools Treasurer Kimberely Napper, as of Sept. 17, the district received around $83,000 in state gifted funding for this school year. State data confirms this.
Without a TAG coordinator, the district lost its ability to offer TAG enrichment to elementary students, said Alexander Jr. High School Principal Abby Rouse.
Since the district can no longer offer the 30-minute enrichment opportunity for elementary students, the district is hoping to equip its teachers to provide something similar in classrooms.
“I feel very confident that our teachers are meeting the needs of all learners in the classroom,” Rouse said. “It’s unfortunate that we can’t provide that additional enrichment opportunity throughout the day. We had some students who enjoyed that, but across the board there has been very little disruption in the services that we are providing.”
The district considered several different options to move programming forward after cutting their TAG coordinator, Rouse said, including sharing services, partnering with another district to share a TAG coordinator, or offering the position as a temporary hire.
Rouse said the district will still provide services such as subject acceleration, which allows students to be placed at a higher level courses regardless of their class standing, Advanced Placement and honors classes, College Credit Plus classes and cluster grouping. Cluster grouping puts gifted students together into a separate class for different academic instruction.
Alexander serves 190 gifted students, Hampton said. The school district will continue to evaluate and meet the needs of their kids, he said.
“Money drives a lot of what we do,” Hampton said. “We do all we can for our kids, obviously, but sometimes we make adjustments, and just because we’re forced to.”
Gifted programs at other districts
Other Athens County school districts have faced budget cuts, such as Trimble Local Schools, and also considered making cuts to their gifted program.
Diane Hobson, Trimble Local Schools’ director of curriculum and testing and federal programs, opposed any suggestions to cut Trimble’s gifted programming.
“The gifted program was one that was brought up that could be cut, however, when we were looking at it, Ohio provides funding for gifted services in school,” Hobson told the Independent. “Through the state funding formula, it [the state] allocates money based on how many students we have here and what percentages of our students are identified as gifted. When we were looking at that last year, we get about $95,000 from the state to support the gifted program.”
Hobson said it did not make much sense for Trimble to cut a program that was bringing in funding to the school district. She said the Trimble district is lucky to have had a strong gifted program that serves 98 gifted students.
Amy Peterson, director of TAG education at Athens City Schools, said the district is supportive of their students and provides the services they need.
“According to the law of the state of Ohio, districts are only responsible for identifying students. We are not required to provide services, and so it is up to each local district to decide what services they’re going to provide,” Peterson said. “Living in Athens City Schools, we are extremely fortunate that our district sees that as a priority and has provided that for decades.”
Athens City School District has 540 students identified as gifted.
Keri Johnson contributed to this reporting.
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