Elizabethton board approves 2025–26 budget with minimum raises, eliminates several positions

The Elizabethton City Board of Education approved the 2025–26 budget at its May meeting, endorsing a minimum 2.6% increase for teachers and a minimum 2.5% increase for classified staff and eliminating several positions that had been funded by temporary grants or special allocations.

The budget matters because it sets pay, staffing and classroom resources for the coming school year and reflects changes to one-time federal and grant funding that the district had used in prior years. Board members and district staff said the package reduces the district’s general-purpose fund while preserving raises for existing staff.

Director of Schools Mike Van Huss opened the budget discussion and asked finance staff to explain details. “That will allow us to adjust our books to accurately reflect what is approved by the state without having to go through three months of our amendment and two readings with the city,” finance staff member Cindy Wilson said, describing a separate resolution the board approved that ties the district’s federal projects budgets to the state ePlan approval process.

Wilson told the board the general-purpose…