Beauregard Parish teachers will see a decrease on their summer supplemental checks, to be issued this month by the School Board, according to Superintendent Timothy Cooley.

The board’s struggling sales tax fund suffered a blow in May, with a decrease of $255,000 in collections compared with May of last year, Cooley said.

Combined with a current deficit of $245,000, May’s decrease brought the fund to a deficit of over $500,000. Cooley said a deficit of that size will be reflected in the sales tax supplemental checks.

“We know that our teachers count on this money, and we always want to give them every bit that we can,” he said. “But in this case we are going to have to reduce the amount of money that we can give this summer.”

The fund is required to maintain a balance of $300,000, and Cooley said in January that officials hadn’t replenished it because they wanted to keep the winter supplements at their usual amount. 

“We know that our teachers depend on that money to help the financial strain during the holiday season, and we wanted to be able to provide that to them,” Cooley said.

Since then, sales tax revenues have fallen below projections each month. At this month’s School Board session, Cooley said the decrease from last year to this year could be attributed to many of the area’s top 20 sales outlets seeing a decrease in sales.

“When the bigger players go down, it can be far worse than when the little guys go down,” he said.

The checks are expected to be issued June 15, and Cooley said he hoped to be able to release the amount that will be issued in the coming days.