Educators from around the state, including some from Rome and Floyd County, will assemble at a rally at the Capitol in Atlanta today to make sure state legislators are aware of their concerns about the possibility of more budget cuts.

The rally is being conducted by the Georgia Association of Educators.

Ronda Ware, Floyd County Association of Educators president and a teacher at Coosa Middle School, confirmed she and others will attend.

“I cannot give you an exact number, but I can tell you that our teachers are concerned, and most I have talked with plan on attending,” she said.

Teachers fear that continually rising educational standards will be harder and harder to meet with continually declining budgets, Ware said.

She said local school systems have been very supportive of teachers during the budget crunch, but additional budget cuts would create a whole new set of challenges.

“We are fortunate to work for a system that looks out for its children, teachers and programs, but no matter how the numbers are crunched, when we are faced with exorbitant budget cuts as we are now, the pain is felt throughout,” she said. “This rings true in every system throughout the state of Georgia.”

Stephen Williams, president of the Rome Association of Educators, said he also plans to attend the rally.

“I don’t want to stand by in silence as decisions are made in public education,” he said. “I know times are tough, but investing in education is the future of our state.”

Williams said he had many concerns, but one of the biggest was with class sizes.

“We’ve made progress,” he said. “We’ve enjoyed having small classrooms. I would hate to see class size limits erased.”

He started teaching in 1986 and is now with Elm Street Elementary.

State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox, meanwhile, called on Georgia legislators Friday to enact legislation that would temporarily relax some requirements on local school systems to help them cope with their own financial crisis.

Speaking to reporters at a conference hosted by the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, Cox noted that the budget Gov. Sonny Perdue proposed last week cuts funds to local school districts by $710 million. Trying to meet requirements on class size, school days per year and a cap on administrative costs is harder when funds are reduced or locked into certain expenditures, she said.

“We have to give the local systems the ability to manage through this,” Cox said. “There is no way they can manage their budgets with what the state is giving them and with what is happening as their local revenue levels (off).”

House Bill 908 would relax most provisions, giving local school districts the flexibility to move money around to preserve teacher jobs.

However, lawmakers have predicted privately that the members of the House Education Committee would be unlikely to pass it because retreating on standards is politically risky.

“It’s not popular,” Cox said. “But it’s going to mean for a few years our class sizes go up. There’s no way around it.”

If the legislation doesn’t pass, the State Board of Education can grant individual waivers from specific regulations to school systems that request them. Cox said it would be a lot of bother for both the state board and the local systems for a statewide problem when blanket legislation could take care of it.

She also expressed concern about the financial viability of the smallest school districts. Consolidating with neighboring districts, as sometimes happens in serious deficits, would likely lead to added administrative waste, she said, adding that she’s found the smallest systems to be the ones with the least inefficiency.

The current budget reduction isn’t isolated, according to Herb Garrett, executive director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association. He said a series of reductions in what the state funds local systems over the last eight years has forced them to boost their local property taxes, shifting more of the cost of education from Atlanta to local taxpayers.

“What had been a gradual shift has become an avalanche,” he said.

Rome News-Tribune Staff Writer Daniel Bell and Walter Jones with Morris News Service contributed to this report.