Alamance-Burlington superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming warned Tuesday that it’s imperative that ABSS receive the full $5.7 million increase in county current expense funding it has requested for the 2025-26 fiscal year, as school officials learned that ABSS will receive a $4.7 million (or 44.8 percent) reduction in state low-wealth funding due to rising property values in Alamance County.
ABSS is seeking the $5.7 million increase in current expense funding, for a total of $59 million for day-to-day operations, as part of its overall county budget request of $78.6 million for the 2025-26 fiscal year.
ABSS received $10.5 million in low-wealth funding from the state for the 2024-25 fiscal year; that allotment is projected to decrease to $5.8 million in 2025-26, based on planning allotments that state education officials announced Friday, ABSS chief finance officer Tony Messer told school board members Tuesday afternoon. “That’s a $4.7 million swing in one year.”
“So, in essence,” Fleming said, “we’re looking at about a $4.5 million cut in state funding.”
The state low-wealth funding is a categorical allotment for certain counties and is intended to provide additional current expense (i.e., operations) funding to enhance student achievement, according to the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI).
“It’s not good news,” Fleming told school board members during their work session Tuesday afternoon. “It’s nothing we can fix; it comes to school districts based on property taxes. Typically, when there’s a revaluation done, the commissioners would fund that gap.”
When a property revaluation is conducted, most counties see an overall increase in the total value of all taxable real estate, which leads to a corresponding decrease in state low-wealth funding, Fleming told the board.
Following the revaluation that Alamance County government conducted in 2023, adopted property values increased from $25.4 billion in 2024 to just shy of $26 billion in 2025, based on the budget ordinances that Alamance County’s commissioners adopted for each of those years.
As Messer explained it, that increase in total property values has resulted in a subsequent reduction in low-wealth funding, based on an assumption that Alamance County government is financially able to provide more county funding for ABSS. “As Alamance County continues to grow and people move into the area, this figure is going to continue to decrease,” the CFO said of the state low-wealth funding.
“Alamance County can’t stop property values from going up,” Fleming said, acknowledging that property values have increased all over the state.
“One option we could do – and I’m not recommending this – is we could amend our budget and ask the commissioners for $4.5 million [in additional funding],” the superintendent said.
However, Fleming said he did recommend talking to state legislators and commissioners. “That [$5.7 million in current expense funding] is imperative we get from our commissioners this year,” he said referring to the total of $59 million in current expense funding that ABSS included in the budget request it submitted to Alamance County government at the end of March.
Determining whether a school system is eligible for state low-wealth is based on multiple factors, including: county per-pupil funding based on taxable real property data provided by the state Department of Revenue; county per-capital income reported to the federal Bureau of Economic Statistics; and the county’s percentage of the state’s area in square miles using information provided by the state demographer’s office. A school system is determined to be eligible to receive state low-wealth funding if it meets additional criteria, according to DPI.
Low-wealth funding can be used for: funding teachers and substitutes; instructional support, teacher assistant, and clerical positions; overtime pay; instructional supplies, equipment, and materials; staff development; fringe benefits; and supplements for teachers and instructional support employees, based on a list of allowable uses from DPI.
Messer told the board that ABSS has traditionally used low-wealth funding to pay for classroom teachers, technology employees, instructional support personnel, and assistant principals.
“So this was decided from the state, based off the reevaluation, and it’s just strictly off of the property revaluation, not taking into account any socioeconomic statuses or anything about the community?” asked school board member Seneca Rogers.
“It’s based on a very complicated formula that I would need the School of Government to come here and explain,” Fleming responded. “I can tell you, we will eventually no longer be a low-wealth county and eventually receive no money on that line.
“What this does slow down,” the superintendent explained, is the administration’s initial plan to restore assistant principal and instructional support positions next year that had been eliminated this year due to budget constraints.
“A lot of that is going to have to slow down until we can get our finger on the pulse,” Fleming told the board. “We are really reliant on that $5 million expansion [request]… Unfortunately, I think the burden of this will fall on the county.”
