Supt.’s preliminary budget = +$20 million over current year’s spending levels
Alamance-Burlington superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming floated some eye-popping county budget numbers during the school board’s work session Tuesday afternoon. If approved by Alamance County’s commissioners in June, the school system potential request represents a potential 35.8 percent and 43.9 percent hike in county funding for ABSS for the 2025-26 fiscal year that begins July 1.
Fleming confirmed for The Alamance News during a break Tuesday afternoon that the budget numbers he outlined for the school board are still very preliminary.
The school system’s county budget request for 2025-26 could total between $80.5 million and $85.3 million, based on figures that Fleming and ABSS chief operations officer Greg Hook outlined Tuesday – numbers that would represent a more than a $20 million increase.
The system’s administrators are considering asking the county for an additional $6.5 million in current expense funding (for day-to-day operations) and $4.8 million in annual capital outlay (termed “PayGo” funding for building repairs, maintenance, technology, and contracted services).
In a separate presentation, Hook outlined another $14.7 million proposed in proposed county funding for 2025-26 to cover such things as roof replacements, HVAC replacements, technology, and security upgrades under a long-range “Capital Improvement Plan” budget that delineates projected costs for maintenance and repairs through the 2029-30 fiscal year.
For the current 2024-25 fiscal year, ABSS received a total of $59.3 million in county funding. The $59.3 million county budget for ABSS included $55.4 million in current expense funding and $3.9 million in capital funding, based on the county budget ordinance that the commissioners adopted in June 2024.
An exact comparison for the amount of funding ABSS had sought, and ultimately received, from the county for the current, 2024-25 fiscal year isn’t available.
That’s because this time a year ago – at the school board’s February 2024 work session – then-superintendent Dr. Dain Butler unveiled a draft county budget request of $57.7 million (about a 10.7 percent increase from the previous fiscal year). That draft budget request was ultimately overshadowed by Butler’s dire warnings about job losses (136 positions that could be cut), along with reductions in months of employment for school principals, teachers, and nurses, as well as the wholesale elimination of the Alamance Virtual School.
Three weeks later, Butler was out, as were his CFO Kim McVey and second-in-command, deputy superintendent Lowell Rogers.
The return of former ABSS superintendent Dr. Bill Harrison last March for a six-month encore as interim superintendent resulted in a three-month delay in finalizing the county budget request for ABSS. In the meantime, the commissioners themselves made several adjustments to this year’s budget for ABSS to provide advance “emergency” funding for projects such as replacing rusted bleachers at Cummings High School.
During Tuesday’s discussion, Fleming predicated his overview of the potential county budget request by telling the board that he was filling in for Tony Messer, who took over as the ABSS chief finance officer in October 2024 and was away at a statewide finance officer conference that afternoon.
“I wanted to share [some current expense, or operations funding] areas we know we will need an expansion budget,” Fleming said, noting that most of those costs will be determined by the biennial state budget that the General Assembly passes later this year.
Those include: $2.5 million to increase the county-funded supplement that school employees receive on top of their state-funded salaries; $1.5 million to restore certified (licensed) positions such as assistant principals, guidance counselors, social workers, and nurses that were eliminated from this year’s budget; $1 million in mandatory increases for employee benefits and employer matching contributions to the State Health Plan; $850,000 for operating expenses such as worker’s compensation and property insurance, utility cost increases, and contracted services; and an 11 percent increase to the county appropriation (estimated at $643,500) that ABSS is required to pass on to charter schools where students from within Alamance County are enrolled.
Referring to the expected state-mandated increase in employee benefits, Fleming said, “When the state legislature gives [a pay raise] to public school employees, state covers [state-funded] positions; they do not pay that for positions that are paid out of federal or local dollars; we’ve been taking that from our [county] allotment to pay for that.”
North Carolina public school officials are anticipating that the General Assembly will award raises of between 3 and 4 percent for school employees in the state budget this year, Fleming said Tuesday.
At the same time, the superintendent noted that the day-to-day costs of doing business are rising. For example, the board that administers the State Health Plan – which oversees health insurance for full-time state employees and retirees – voted Friday to approve higher premiums in 2026 that would vary according to an employee’s or retiree’s pay, multiple news outlets have reported. A vote on the actual premium rates is expected late this year.
Fleming said Tuesday that ABSS is planning for a $300 to $400 increase per employee in mandatory employer matching contributions for health insurance. “I’m giving very round numbers here,” he added, saying that health insurance premiums, state raises for public school employees, and a 2 percent increase in retirement benefits could cost the school system an additional $1 million during the 2025-26 fiscal year.
Fleming also told the board, “We would like to catch up the supplement that was frozen last year [at the percentage levels for the previous 2023-24 fiscal year] to the current school year,” for an estimated cost of $2.5 million in 2025-26.
In previewing the potential $850,000 for operating expense increases, Fleming said that ABSS had neglected to ask for county funding in 2023 and 2024 to cover the operating costs, such as utilities and third-party custodial services, incurred once the new high school (Southeast) opened in August 2023. “We never received any type of increase,” the superintendent said.
Fleming said he also wants a $643,500 bump in current expense funding to cover the amount of money that ABSS is statutorily required to share with charter schools; other ABSS officials have said that a share of county funding must be shared not only with charter schools within Alamance County but also other charters schools, including the Uwharrie Charter Academy in Asheboro, where Alamance County students are enrolled.
The school board is currently scheduled to hold a public hearing from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. on February 24 to gather input about what the public thinks the school system’s funding priorities for the upcoming 2025-26 fiscal year, which begins July 1.
