Winston-Salem/Forsyth board requests county funding formula while community demands transparency on $13 million gap

Winston-Salem ' The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education on May 13 approved the district's FY 2025-26 funding request based on the county's Scenario A formula, asking the county to fund the district at approximately $180 million while leaders said the budget still faces about a $13 million gap.

The vote to submit the funding request to Forsyth County followed a budget update from Superintendent Tricia McManus and months of public comment from teachers, union leaders and residents urging transparency and additional county or state support. Vice Chair Alex Bohannon moved the budget request; the board approved it by recorded vote.

The request matters because district leaders said state and federal allotments and available grant funding do not cover all positions the district counts as necessary. "If we're going to balance our budget, we would need to save, have some kind of budget savings of about 13 more million dollars," McManus said in her presentation about personnel and position-control challenges.

Public commenters, many of them school employees, said the board must provide more detail and protect staff pay. Jenny Easter, president of the Forsyth County Association of Educators, told the board: "First, a written commitment from the board of ed that every worker will receive their full salary in May and through the summer, and people because people cannot pay their rent on good intentions." Teacher Derek Setzer asked specifically about the state's corrective action plan and whether the full document would be released: "Can you guarantee full transparency of the corrective action plan due to the state board by May 15? Will the full document, not just a summary, be made public for educators and families before it's submitted?"

Board members and the superintendent said the…