BAY MINETTE — The Baldwin County Board of Education voted 5-1 Thursday night to approve the second phase of the system’s Reduction in Force plan, though the amended resolution passed by the Board makes it unclear which jobs will be affected by the upcoming cuts.

The plan, approved in August, was initially formulated to make up a more than $14 million deficit in school system funds. But a recent declaration by Alabama Gov. Bob Riley of seven percent proration, which equates to approximately $7 million in additional cuts, has forced the system to be even leaner.

The original agenda item placed before the Board listed 10 positions to be cut, all of which were in the system’s Central Office. The positions included Attendance Coordinator, School Safety Supervisor, At-Risk Resource Teacher, four secretarial positions and two network technicians.

After schools superintendent Faron Hollinger requested shortly before the meeting that the item be deleted, it was brought back before the Board in an amended form, which did not list any specific positions to be cut.

“We simply thought we needed more time as we thought about that list,” Hollinger said. “However, with the deletion to the deletion we thought it would be appropriate to go ahead and declare the RIF.”

The vote divided a Board that has been forced to take major actions in previous months in the face of dwindling local and state revenues that make up the bulk of the school system’s funds. Forced to balance a budget that contained $75 million less than 2008, more than 400 teachers and support employees were laid off, salaries were reduced and retirement incentives were offered to interested employees.

District 6 Board Member Robert Callahan was the lone dissenting vote in the resolution’s passage, saying he was not comfortable laying off additional employees until a more comprehensive plan was presented by the system.

“I don’t feel like this solves an enormous problem that we have,” Callahan said. “This may be a step along the way, but I’m not comfortable voting for any more reductions in force until there is something more comprehensive that addresses the entire shortfall created by the recent proration.”

District 3 Board member Elmer McDaniel voted for the resolution, but like fellow Board members Norm Moore and Frank Trione, McDaniel stressed the need for a more comprehensive plan that addressed the full shortfall amount.

“We’ve got to start somewhere,” McDaniel said. “I think we need a total plan to address the total amount. What that is, I don’t know. It hasn’t been brought to us for consideration. But it needs to be done.”

Hollinger said the item would be brought back before the Board once it is decided which positions will be cut. The affected positions will remain Central Office positions.

Other motions passed by the Board Thursday included educational excursions for three schools, the $42,680 purchase of system-wide power management software to reduce computer power usage, and the approval of a delegation of up to five Board members to the Alabama Association of School Boards 2009 convention, held in Birmingham this December.

An amendment to the motion was proposed by Callahan to prohibit the use of general fund money for Board member travel to the convention, but it failed in a 3-3 vote.