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Franklin County school board approves deficit-reduction plan after months-long audit finding
Summary
Faced with an auditor’s discovery that $2.6 million of one-time funds were carried into FY25, the Franklin County School Board approved a package of reimbursements and temporary cuts that administrators say will largely close a $1.41 million shortfall while preserving most classroom positions.
The Franklin County School Board voted Monday to adopt a multi-part plan intended to address a FY2025 budget shortfall that auditors traced to one-time funds mistakenly carried forward into the district’s operating budget.
Superintendent Dr. Sears told the board an initial $2.6 million carryover of one-time federal and construction grant funds had been treated as recurring revenue, leaving the district facing what the county finance director later pegged as a $1,413,850 deficit. "We can’t excuse the mistake," Dr. Sears said, describing a "perfect storm" of late federal reimbursements and tens of thousands of accounting entries that obscured the error during closeout.
The administration proposed applying several already-available items — including a $367,000 carryover, roughly $518,000 in food-service reimbursements, and a $110,795 emergency-management reimbursement — and asked schools to temporarily reduce discretionary supply allocations, yielding about $1,160,185 toward the deficit. To close the remainder, staff recommended a set of temporary reductions: not filling three secondary positions for the spring semester (estimated $100,000), suspending the DSIP program for the second semester (estimated $200,000), and eliminating two grant-funded positions (roughly $367,000) if absolutely necessary.
After discussion, the board approved the plan as presented but explicitly excluded suspending DSIP and eliminating the two grant-funded positions from the immediate package. That version relies on the carryover and reimbursements and smaller school-level reductions while staff pursue additional reconciliations and county coordination. The motion passed on a roll-call vote with all members recorded as "yes." "We tried to do everything we could with as little disruption as possible to students," Dr. Sears said after the vote.
Board members pressed staff on out-of-district special-education expenses and transportation, which Dr. Sears and finance staff identified as two of the largest drivers of FY25 cost overruns. The superintendent said invoices for Community Services Act (CSA) placements are often late, provider rates change during the year, and some transportation runs required one-on-one presence because of student needs — all factors that increased costs beyond budgeted estimates.
Board members requested a set of governance and process changes: weekly budget check-ins among key finance and program staff, monthly joint budget meetings with county finance officials, a better purchase-order and invoice reconciliation process, and an outside audit or review of the district’s accounting systems. Finance staff committed to reconciling FY25 placements and to providing more detailed, monthly budget overview reports to the board.
The board scheduled a joint meeting with the Board of Supervisors for Jan. 22 to discuss broader county–school budget coordination. Next steps depend on final audit documentation the superintendent said the county planned to publish to the Board of Supervisors’ meeting packet.
