New Hanover school district's budget undecided with more than 150 jobs still in question

With the New Hanover County Board of Education running out of time to vote on its upcoming school year budget, the district is still 156 positions over what it can afford and has not voted yet.

July 1 starts the new fiscal year, and if a budget is not voted on, Superintendent Charles Foust said employees will not get paid, so the school board has called an emergency meeting for Thursday to discuss the budget further and cast their vote.

Originally, the administration announced in a work session in February that the district was facing a $20 million budget shortfall, and at “worst-case scenario” 279 positions could be cut.

The shortfall was a result of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds from the COVID-19 pandemic ending later this year and what school district officials have described as insufficient state allotments to address their needs as well as using fund balance year after year.

Funding from the county

District administration has been holding budget work sessions with the board of education for months to try to brainstorm ways to save positions from cuts. This included requests from the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners for funding increases.

The commissioners, having dealt with their own budgeting disagreements, decided to increase their annual funding to the school district by $5.5 million in addition to the $96 million that the school district has previously received.

The commissioners also added an additional $1.95 million to go toward Pre-K funding and $2.1 million to keep the same number of nurses and school mental health counselors.

During an April budget work session for the county, Eric Credle, chief financial officer for New Hanover County, said the additional funding from the county could save 76 positions in the school district.

Position reduction

Staff is planning to try to reduce positions through attrition, but the attrition rates for certain categories of student-facing positions have been slower and have not reached what the district needs them to be for a balanced budget.

Bus aides, teacher assistants, social workers, teachers who have a K-6 license, which includes instructional coaches, AIG teachers and elementary school teachers are the categories that have not met the target attrition rate.

Christopher Barnes, assistant superintendent of human resources, said that if the district has the flexibility to move some of those employees and place them into vacant positions at other schools, it could help save some positions. For example, Barnes said this could be putting a bus aide in a classroom for the time being, but that the district couldn't do that with social workers.

Right now, Barnes said that 156 are still left to be resolved through attrition, but that with the district moving positions into vacancies, that number could drop down to 120.

"I feel like everything we've said has fallen on deaf ears," board member Pat Bradford said.

But Foust said that administration has not been able to give the board what they want because it's above the district's financial means.

Foust said he has never had a budget not passed by this point.

A decrease in Pre-K classrooms

District administration applied for a Head Start Grant for the school district's Pre-K program, but in Tuesday's meeting administration announced that the the school district did not receive it. Without the grant, the district's Pre-K classrooms will reduce from 46 to 29 in the upcoming year.

There will be a decrease from 764 students from the 2023-24 school year to 522 students for the 2024-25 school year. All returning children and children who were placed in Pre-K will be served in the upcoming school year.

Barnes said staff will work with Pre-K teachers from the classrooms being cut to put them in other positions.

The board decided to call an emergency meeting to further discuss and vote on the budget at 11 a.m. on Thursday.