Following a public hearing Tuesday night, Mathews County School Board members took out their red pens to the division’s 2017-2018 budget, cutting a number of proposed new positions, including a teacher and teacher assistant for a planned 4-year-old preschool initiative.

Other items that had made it past earlier drafts but ended up on the cutting room floor this time were a division-wide social worker position, a fourth maintenance position and a teacher assistant for the gifted department.

The gifted department will still get its T/A; that position will be shifted from the assistant covering the Thomas Hunter Middle School library, since a media specialist for that school did make it past the cuts.

Other items spared included two additional elementary teachers to handle projected large class sizes in second grade and kindergarten; placing the Mathews High School athletic trainer in the division’s budget; and adding a full-time registered nurse position at MHS in anticipa...