Our thanks to Natchez-Adams School District Interim Superintendent Joyce Johnson and other district personnel for their hard work in the past few months.

Only a short time period after citizens had been told that every penny cut from the district would drastically affect the education of the district’s children, Johnson and her team have shown quite the opposite.

They readily admit cutting nearly $400,000 from the district’s budget wasn’t difficult, but it was time-consuming.

Their work made a proposed property tax increase no longer necessary.

We applaud their work to date. The next step is to challenge the school administrators and the school board to asking themselves, what else can be saved or made more efficient?

The district’s needs are many. Among the most-dire need that will need to be addressed in the not-so-distant future is the shape of its aging school buildings.

Working to get the district more lean and mean, financially, could set the district up to begin working on plans to construct new school buildings soon.

Administrators have shown cuts can be made, and we trust they’ll continue those efforts. It’s likely that cuts today could make education tomorrow even better.