RCSS continues with budget reductions

ASHEBORO — Randolph County School System is continuing to work toward reducing its budget in the face of anticipated state and federal cuts.

The Randolph County Schools Board of Education was presented with the district’s Budget Reduction Plan No. 2, which is aimed at addressing the expected disparity between the low-wealth funding they received last year and what they’re expected to receive this year, at its Monday regular business meeting.

“We’re not losing our low-wealth money, but we are losing $2,485,370 of low-wealth money compared to what we had in 2024-25,” superintendent Stephen Gainey said. “So it’s a reduction. We’ve heard different opinions on what’s going to happen, but when we got to the end of June, we felt like we needed to start moving toward addressing that.”

The Low Wealth Supplemental Funding is a supplement given to school systems in low-wealth counties — those whose ability to generate revenue to support public schools is below the state average — by the State of North Carolina.

However, the current rumor is that those funding formulas are going to be changed fairly dramatically in the upcoming state budget.

“I’ve heard so many stories on this and legislative people will tell you one thing this week and another thing next week,” board chair Gary Cook said.

“A conversation I just had two weeks ago was that it’s pretty much done,” board member Tracy Boyles said. “It’s going away. We’re basically being told not to bank on your low-wealth funding as it’s probably going to be gone.”

So to address this assumed deficit, the district is working to come up with additional funds.

Gainey said the plan is to first see if the district can drum up $1.3 million in budget reductions and then utilize around $1.2 million in fund balance to cover the remaining amount so that they can get going with the school year.

“Eventually, we’re going to lose all of this $2.485 million,” Gainey said. “We’re going to lose it all. It’s just a matter of when, I do believe, based on what we’re hearing.”

Per the superintendent, the district has made adjustments to various vacant positions including combining two elementary media specialist positions and two counselor positions into singular positions, respectively, reducing another vacant media specialist position by 50% and freezing both a vacant digital teaching and learning specialist position and vacant human resources director position at the Central Officer for six months.

These actions have resulted in savings of approximately $333,000.

RCSS also made reductions in copier and printer costs totalling around $165,000, for a combined amount of savings of just less than $500,000 in reductions.

“We’ve already made big headway toward the $1.3 million, the in-between goal for this $2.485 million, and we haven’t touched a single person’s job as far as them losing employment,” Gainey said. “So the key here is going to be that when opportunities present themselves, we’re taking advantage of them.

“Do I think everyone is going to be completely happy with this? Maybe not, I don’t know how I’d feel as a principal, but I also know how it feels to sit across the desk from people and tell them that they were no longer employed.”

Gainey also stated that starting on July 1, the school system put a hiring freeze in place for non-classroom certified jobs at the school level.

“One of the things we have to be careful with in all of this is that we have to be watching what becomes vacant and what can we do with it?,” Gainey said. “Is there something we can do or is there not? We’re going to be very careful with that because we want to have school, but we also have to move toward the $2.485 million because I don’t think it’s coming back.”

The Randolph County Schools Board of Education will next meet Aug. 18.