Alamance-Burlington school board members reviewed a proposed county budget request this week that, if approved by Alamance County’s commissioners later this spring, would top $78.6 million and represent an increase of 32.5 percent in overall county funding for ABSS for the upcoming fiscal year that begins July 1.
School board members have not yet voted to approve the budget request. School board members are scheduled to hold a public hearing on the 2025-26 county budget request for ABSS at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, March 24. The board is scheduled later the same evening, during its monthly business meeting, to vote on a county budget request that will be submitted by March 31, as requested by Alamance County government officials, school board chairman Sandy Ellington-Graves said Tuesday afternoon.
The school system’s proposed county budget for 2025-26 represents a potential increase of 32.5 percent (or an additional $19.3 million in total funding) above the county’s funding levels for ABSS for the current fiscal year that ends June 30 (see accompanying chart).
By comparison, ABSS officials had requested a total of $59.2 million – and received a total of $59.3 million – in county funding for the 2024-25 fiscal year. Total county funding for ABSS in 2024-25 increased by 13.7 percent ($7.2 million) from the previous 2023-24 fiscal year, based on the county budget ordinance that Alamance County commissioners adopted in June 2024.
The school system’s proposed county budget request for the 2025-26 fiscal year includes: $59 million in current expense funding (i.e., day-to-day operations); $4.8 million in capital outlay funding for small building maintenance and repair projects; and $14.7 million in capital improvement plan (CIP) funding for larger maintenance and repair projects (see accompanying chart).
$19.5M proposed for building maintenance and repair projects
If approved by Alamance County’s commissioner, current expense funding for ABSS would increase by 10.7 percent ($5.7 million); and total funding for building maintenance and repairs would increase by 227.4 percent ($13,650,218) during the upcoming fiscal year, based on the figures that were presented to school board members during their latest work session Tuesday afternoon.
School officials have emphasized the $5.7 million increase – which they term the “expansion” budget – rather than the total amount, which includes capital funding.
In presenting the capital funding (i.e., building maintenance and repairs) portion of the county budget request for 2025-26, chief operations officer Greg Hook said Tuesday that ABSS had been directed to develop and include a long-range capital improvement (CIP) plan, along with cost estimates, so that county government officials know about and can plan for big-ticket facility projects, such as roofing and HVAC system replacements.
For 2025-26, the $14.7 million in county CIP funding for big-ticket projects would include: $6.1 million for roof repairs/replacements at Sylvan Elementary and Southern Middle schools; $4.8 million to replace HVAC systems at Graham High, as well as Haw River and Sylvan Elementary schools; $2 million in technology equipment, software, and repairs; and $1.75 million for security cameras and keyless entry systems at seven schools.
The $4.8 million in county funding for capital outlay (smaller maintenance and repair projects) would consist of: door, boiler, furniture, window blinds, and flooring replacements; bleacher repairs/replacements at six schools; new playground equipment; roof and HVAC repairs; and painting at seven schools, the locations of which were not delineated in Hook’s presentation.
Approximately 20 percent ($1 million) of the $4.8 million in county capital outlay would be designated as “contingency” for facilities projects ($800,000) and maintenance vehicles ($200,000), based on the part of the county budget request that Hook presented to school board members during their work session.
“Many of our school facilities are 20-plus years behind, not just [on] preventative maintenance but renovations,” Dr. Aaron Fleming said, referring to his observations while touring all of the school system’s buildings since he took over as ABSS superintendent on September 18, 2024.
“I think particularly about the high schools,” Fleming said, noting that, while Graham and Cummings received small upgrades as part of the $150 million package that voters approved for ABSS in 2018, neither had structural renovations and need “shoring up” due to the age of those facilities. “As I look back, ABSS has not really asked for a lot, aside from the bond.”
Fleming cited building infrastructure, such as flooring, plumbing, and electrical systems, as areas that he said need to be addressed.
“It appears to me that, over the year, the district would go to the commissioners and ask for a handful of items, but there was never a plan for renovations,” the superintendent said in outlining how ABSS ultimately developed a five-year capital improvement plan that calls for $14.7 million in county CIP funding for 2025-26.
Hook recalled during the work session, “Similar to what Dr. Fleming said, we don’t think that the school system ever presented what we would call a formal capital plan to the county. If you were to go back and watch, just in the past two years, how many times I went to the commissioners asking for funds, in a more or less haphazard way, that’s because there was an absence of a capital improvement plan. If you went back further than that, we were working with what they were calling a ‘Top 10’ list [of unfunded capital projects], but even the Top 10 list requests were not made all at one time…The county needs to be able to budget with information from us, relative to the larger projects.”
“This is a large amount of money,” Fleming acknowledged. “We looked back and gave estimates of how much things should be.”
Proposed increase of $5.7M in county current expense funding
During his portion of the budget presentation Tuesday afternoon, ABSS chief finance officer Tony Messer said Tuesday afternoon said that the proposed $59 million county current expense budget represents an “increased ask” of $5.7 million, which would be on top of the $53.3 million in county current expense funding that ABSS received for the 2024-25 fiscal year.
Messer told the board that some of the other line items on the current expense funding side of the ledger are non-negotiable – including projected increases in utility costs, state healthcare and retirement benefits, and workers’ compensation and property insurance premiums.
State retirement benefits are projected to increase in 2025-26, and “then health insurance, all the districts around [us] are budgeting $8,400 per employee,” the CFO said. “We really don’t know the exact amount.”
At the same time, the CFO pointed out to the school board that some state-mandated current expenses – contingent upon factors such as how much of a raise that teachers receive as part of the General Assembly’s biennial budget – are impossible to pin down at this point.
“We are charged with putting these budgets together without a lot of information and trying to come up with a request to our county commissioners,” Messer said Tuesday. “But there’s really, really a lot of unknowns in trying to put this budget together,” he said of the county budget request, particularly when neither the state nor federal budgets for K-12 public education have been set.
Pay raises and supplements
In the two weeks since an earlier iteration of the county budget request, Messer has reduced the estimated costs for some line items that school board members and ABSS officials have identified as priorities.
For example, the estimated cost to increase an existing county-funded supplement for teachers and school administrators has been reduced by $750,000, from $2.5 million to $1.75 million; hiring new staff, by $250,000, from $1.5 million to $1.25 million; and the added expense of a new supplement for classified employees has been reduced by $200,000, from $1.3 million to $1.1 million.
Two weeks ago, $1 million had been designated to provide approximately 75 ABSS employees whose positions are county-funded with 4 percent raises, on par with school employees whose salaries are state-funded. That cost has been penciled in at $250,000 to provide those county-funded employees with a 4 percent raise in 2025-26, commensurate with a 4 percent raises that all school employees are expected to receive as part of the forthcoming state biennial budget.
Meanwhile, Messer recently clarified for The Alamance News the reason for the discrepancy between the number of county-funded employees that ABSS shows (75) versus 180 county-funded reported by the state Department of Public Instruction.
“The difference in the number of employees paid with local funds is due to timing and strategic budget adjustments,” Messer explained. “The state dashboard reflects data from a report prepared by our Human Resources Department in November 2024. Since then, our Finance Department has worked to strategically shift some employee salaries to state funding, which helps maximize resources and reduce reliance on local funds.
“As of March 3, the number of employees paid with local funds has decreased further to 75,” the CFO added. “This adjustment is part of our ongoing efforts to manage funding efficiently while ensuring support for students and staff.”
ABSS is also proposing to use $1.1 million in current expense funding to provide a new county-funded supplement for hundreds of “classified” employees (instructional assistants; clerical workers and secretaries; technicians; bus drivers; cafeteria assistants; maintenance workers; mechanics; plumbers; carpenters; and electricians) whose positions don’t require state licensure and are typically paid on an hourly basis.
The new supplement for classified employees would be similar to the existing county-funded supplements that “certified” ABSS employees – i.e., principals, assistant principals, and teachers – receive as a percentage, based on years of continuous employment with ABSS, on top of the state-funded portion of their salaries.
The number of classified employees eligible for the supplement was up this week but the estimated cost was down, apparently due to recalibrating the supplement at a flat rate, rather than at the previously-suggested percentage ranges, which would be paid on top of hourly or monthly pay rates.
Though ABSS officials previously estimated that 562 classified employees would be eligible for the supplement, Messer revised that figure to approximately 900 employees in response to a question that Ellington-Graves posed during the work session.
The school system’s administrators had initially proposed offering a percentage-based supplement on top of classified employees’ hourly rate. Messer suggested this week that the classified supplement could be halved, with the first half paid in November of each year and the second half paid the following June. “Employees will feel the impact right at the holidays, and for June, it will help bridge the gap until they come back to school in the fall,” he said.
School board member Avery Wagoner highlighted the importance of continuing to bump up the county-funded supplement for ABSS principals, assistant principals, and teachers.
“The reason for this certified supplement is because of the competition around us,” Wagoner said. “We are recruiting for that same labor each and every day. Once you lose that employee, it costs us to hire [someone else].”
‘Hitting the main priorities’
“I feel like we are hitting a lot of the main priorities – the certified supplement; the request around the supplement for classified employees; and then, what Dr. Fleming said earlier, a lot of the operational stuff ,” school board member Seneca Rogers summarized.
“We had a whole school that was not accounted for in that operational cost,” Rogers said, referring to the fact that the previous CFO had not budgeted funds for the annual costs to operate the new high school, Southeast, after it opened in August 2023. “Then doing things around trying to upgrade technology, and the maintenance piece of things, a lot of those costs have gone up. Some of those operational costs are going to be increases. There is no way around it. There [are] a lot of schools that need things. Then community growth – at some point, we’re going to have to talk about a new school or schools.
“Our commissioners continue to bring in businesses,” Rogers added. “The Toyota plant is going up [under construction on the Randolph County side of Liberty], and there’s going to be people who possibly live in Alamance County. All those things are going to be costs – if we really are going to be a future-forward county.”
“This is not just us,” Wagoner responded. “This is the across the country.”
School board members will resume their discussion about the proposed county budget request for ABSS at their next meeting on March 24.
