Former Alamance-Burlington superintendent Dr. Dain Butler won’t receive a second severance payment of $116,362 due to a $1.6 million deficit in unrestricted fund balance (i.e., “rainy-day” savings) that ABSS ended the previous fiscal year with on June 30, 2024.
School board members heard the results of their audit for the 2023-24 fiscal year during their latest work session on Tuesday afternoon (see related story, this edition).
School board attorney Adam Mitchell of the Tharrington Smith law firm in Raleigh confirmed for The Alamance News after the work session Tuesday afternoon that, due to the lack of available fund balance, Butler will not receive a second severance payment of $116,362.
Butler resigned as superintendent on March 4, 2024, after less than two years at the helm but with nearly three years remaining on his employment contract with ABSS, which had been scheduled to run through June 30, 2027.
Under the terms of the resignation agreement that school board members voted to accept last March, Butler would’ve received up to the equivalent of a year’s salary ($218,400) – albeit in two installments, beginning with the first payment of $102,038, which represented the amount of unrestricted fund balance that ABSS had on hand at the time.
However, a financial footnote in the former superintendent’s resignation agreement stipulated that the second installment of $116,362 would only be paid after the financial audit for the 2023-24 fiscal year was completed and the auditor determined there were sufficient funds to cover the payment. School board members had been told in March 2024 that the first severance payment to Butler would deplete the remaining funds that ABSS had on hand in undesignated fund balance.
State law requires that payment of any severance to North Carolina public school superintendents to come exclusively from unrestricted fund balance within the county-funded portion of the school system’s budget.
School board members voted 5-2 last March to accept Butler’s resignation, with current board member Seneca Rogers and former board member Ryan Bowden voting against, saying they objected to the financial terms of the resignation agreement. Voting in favor was: former board member Donna Westbrooks, as well as current board members Sandy Ellington-Graves, Dan Ingle, Chuck Marsh, and Dr. Charles Parker.
School board members made no mention Tuesday afternoon about the potential second severance payment to Butler during a discussion about the financial audit.
The audit had been delayed for about two months due to the absence of a chief financial officer for ABSS, between the February 2024 resignation of former CFO Kim McVey and the October 2024 arrival of current CFO Tony Messer.
