The Madison County School Board has made an additional change to its approved fiscal year 2027 budget–adding back in one of four eliminated positions.
In February, superintendent Anna Graham presented a draft budget to the Madison County Board of Supervisors that requested level local funding, while providing salary increases (3% for all employees with an additional 1% for all non-administrative positions), covering a 16.7% health insurance increase and adding eight positions. A previously agreed to rent amount from the Boys & Girls Club of Madison County was removed, reflecting an earlier request by the organization for increased local funding. The supervisors had little feedback on the budget.
Despite that, during a subsequent school board meeting, the board voted 3-2 to reduce those eight positions down to four, keeping the two additional special education teaching positions to address the continued increase in that student population, along with one English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher and an aide at Waverly Yowell Elementary School. Removed were the two additional aides for inclusion classes at Madison Primary School, an additional kindergarten through fifth grade teacher and the aide for the RTR Teacher Residency Program grant. The funding for those four positions, $185,000, was instead moved to a new line item–a strategic initiative fund.
Now that has been amended again. This time, board members opted to pull $35,000 from the new fund to hire back one of the four eliminated positions–an aide at the primary school. An additional $75,000 has already been removed from the fund by the board of supervisors in order to help fund the absorption of health insurance increases for county employees, but school board members didn’t formally change the line item.
School board member Graham Davidson said the fund offers a way to boost teacher pay by an additional 1% in FY28 over the amount the state allocates for salary increases, something that is already included in the approved FY27 budget.
“The idea is that over four to five years, we can increase pay by 4-5% above what the state is giving to be more competitive [among our neighbors],” he said.
School board member Sue Wood suggested tabling the creation of the strategic initiative fund, instead opting to use the funds to bring back all four of the positions that were eliminated from Graham’s budget.
“It’s saying, ‘you told us what you wanted, you told us what you needed, but we’re not going to do that,’” Wood said. “We were able to come up with a budget that added a little bit of money to everybody and we were adding positions and it was a level funded budget. It was great. It was the choice of this board to not listen to the recommendations of the superintendent’s advisory committee.”
Davidson said the board is hyper focused on increasing salaries in part to avoid teacher burnout.
“I think the reason why we have burnout and such is because we have not been providing resources we should have been the last couple years due to budget cutbacks,” school board member Mitch Dickey countered. “I didn’t hear from a single teacher in the county in favor of cutting three positions.”
School board member Lauran Gordon, one of three who voted in favor of the budget that eliminated four positions, said she didn’t either. She said adding back in the aide at the primary school represented the board listening to the feedback it has received.
The school board members voted unanimously to add back in the aide position. Graham cautioned that the budget process isn’t over. She said the General Assembly is expected to continue its discussions on the state budget next week, after which the school division should have more concrete numbers.
“There’s a really good chance we’re either going to come back and need to cut something or come back and have more,” Graham said. “We hope we’re adding.”
