With school starting next week, Macon County Schools faces a $1.7 million budget shortfall in local funding.
The Board of Commissioners allocated an increase of $409,380 for the school system, bringing the total local 2025-26 operational budget to $9,816,628. Capital funds are budgeted at $1,150,000 — down $100,000 from 2024-25. The county had originally intended to give the school $9,616,382 in operational funds, but the commissioners agreed to move $200,246 in contingency funds into the system’s operational fund after the system requested more money.
In a Board of Education budget work session on Aug. 12, MCS Finance Director Alayna Ledford said the increase was not enough to account for the increase in prices the school faces due to inflation. The system had requested $12,377,245.68 from the county to maintain the school system as-is, of which it received $10,595,792 when factoring in $729,164 for local supplements and $50,000 in appropriations for Career and Technical Internships. This has left the school system with a $1,781,453.68 budget shortfall.
Superintendent Josh Lynch said, “It still didn’t cover the [cost to] maintain. So we’ve gone years and years without getting the [funds to] maintain, but we’ve had to dip in and appropriate more fund balance. And thank God for ESSER we were able to do so, but we’re going to reach a point where that’s no longer there.”
“And guess what? We are there,” Board Chair Jim Breedlove said. “We’ve hit the wall, we start looking at over $1.8 million just to maintain, and thank God this board … had the foresight to retain the ESSER monies.”
The school system was able to increase its fund balance through the management of money granted through the COVID-19 federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER).
Ledford shared a list of options that had been included in the system’s proposed budget that the county has not appropriated funding for. Without additional funding, the system would have to fund the options with its fund balance, or otherwise cut the options.
• A projected 4% certified raise at $56,047.34
• A projected 3% classified raise at $68,572.34
• A 10% raise in athletic supplements at $35,272.64
• The school nutritional supplement for Franklin High School and Highlands School at $250,000
• A projected benefit increase at $228,984.54
• A projected utility increase at $65,848.31
• An increase in local teachers at $654,664.60
• CTE Early Childhood Education Pathway funding at $78,000
• Other funding at $994,238.27
Breedlove also asked about the status of some of the system’s federal funding, which had previously been frozen by the Trump administration. The dollars have since been unfrozen, Ledford said, and though the funds are slightly less than they were in 2024-25, the system does now have access to them.
The board agreed to request a joint meeting with the Macon County Board of Commissioners to more clearly outline the school’s financial needs and to request additional funding for some of its highest priority needs and projects.
At the school board’s Aug. 18 meeting, Ledford broke the school’s requested budget options into percentages of the county’s budget. The system’s current appropriations from the county came in at 16.35% of the county’s $64,711,599 budget. A budget that maintains services from 2024-25 would make up 19.10%. Budgets to fund top priorities and expand would make up 20.48% and 24.23% of the county budget, respectively.
Ledford also said the system was soliciting quotes for funding the highest-priority projects at the school system.
The board approved a $15,000 pump motor drive repair for HVAC at Iotla Valley Elementary and $4,292 to cover the cost of installing new fencing around the Nantahala wastewater treatment plant, which allowed the project to be officially completed. With this, the most pressing projects for the start of the school year are all covered, Ledford said.
The system has yet to approve a budget as it waits on the state budget to be completed and is operating on a continuing resolution.