Cumberland County Schools Associate Superintendent of Business Operations Jay Toland gave school board members a harsh reality check Thursday morning.
“Currently, we are operating at a structural deficit,” Toland said during a special work session held at Fayetteville Technical Community College. “And what that means is that we’re using our fund balance to pay for recurring expenses.”
According to Toland’s presentation and the draft budget board members approved last month, the school system will take $21.6 million from its fund balance to pay for $10 million in positions and $3.8 million in contracted services. Those positions and contracted services were formerly covered under federal funding — the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund — ending in September.
While the deficit isn’t ideal, Toland explained to board members Thursday that the school system faces an even bigger problem: the need to pay educators more while fighting increasing operational costs from aging schools. Even worse, he said, the school system is projected to lose $17 million in the coming fiscal year through the N.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, which gives state funding to students who wish to attend private schools.
Gov. Roy Cooper spoke out against the program during a February visit to E.E. Smith High School. Cumberland County has the most recipients of Opportunity Scholarships of any county in the state.
House Republicans in the state legislature are currently pushing forward House Bill 823, proposed legislation that would increase state funding for the Opportunity Scholarship program. Under the bill, the largest increase would come in fiscal year 2025-26, and would open eligibility for the program to all students, regardless of prior public school attendance or income level, according to an analysis by the Office of State Budget and Management. The analysis also shows that, should House Bill 823 pass, Cumberland County would lose the most funding of any county in the state at $17.1 million, or a 5% decrease in its total state funding, in fiscal year 2026-27.
The loss in funding for Cumberland County is tied to the projected decrease in average daily membership, a measure of how many students attend the county’s public schools. According to the Office of State Budget and Management’s analysis, Cumberland County would lose 2,235 additional students by fiscal year 2026-27 with the expansion of the Opportunity Scholarship program.
According to the N.C. Dept. of Public Instruction, per state law, average daily membership in part determines state funding for public schools. Cumberland County Schools’ rate of student enrollment has been declining, Superintendent Dr. Marvin Connelly Jr. said. The expected expansion of the Opportunity Scholarship program in the wake of additional financial constraints also poses a problem for the school system, Toland said.
“We’re not really in a position to grow the revenues because the ADM [average daily membership] isn’t increasing,” Toland said. “So it’s more strategic to cut costs and be more certain and be better with our expenditures.”
That has led to recent school system initiatives like partnering with the private company ESS to hire substitute teachers and outsourcing grounds and maintenance work, he said. But, Toland said, those measures alone won’t be enough.
“Now comes the kind of thing that nobody ever wants to talk about, but in my experience, when you have a declining ADM, one way that you can significantly save money is by consolidation of schools,” he said.
Doing so could save the school system hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, Toland estimated. Officials did not discuss schools that could be consolidated at Thursday’s meeting.
“In general, you close the school, you save on office staff because you don’t need them; they’re building-specific,” he said. “I’m not advocating for consolidation of schools. I’m just saying that this is a way that I have seen that you save a substantial amount of money in a declining-ADM environment.”
New construction?
Toland said another way to save money in the long term would be to build new schools. Many of the school system’s buildings are 50 to 60 years old, leading to “sky-high” utility costs, Connelly said.
“We’re starting to pay for having these old buildings,” Connelly said. “You can only defer stuff so long.”
By consolidating schools and placing students in new, energy-efficient buildings, the school system could save on staffing, utility costs and maintenance costs, Toland said.
However, he noted, the hundreds of millions of dollars necessary to build new schools would need to come from somewhere. According to Toland, the county could provide funding in the following ways:
- Directly funding any construction projects with their own money
- Issuing a general obligation bond, which would need to be approved by Cumberland County voters and the Local Government Commission
- Issuing a limited obligation bond, which requires authorization from the Local Government Commission but does not need to be voted on
“Think of it as a mortgage payment,” Toland said. “When you go out to borrow the money or mortgage a school, generally, you pay back over 20 years. If you go to the LGC, the Local Government Commission, of the state treasurer’s office and you say, ‘I’m going to build a new school, and we’re going to borrow money for 20 years,’ that usually gets rubber-stamped.”
To pay off the debt from bonds, counties have three options, Toland said:
- Using their general fund money
- Using the funding from the state lottery, which is capped at $100 million. Toland said the amount of funding each county receives is determined by average daily membership, so Cumberland County would get a smaller share.
- Increasing the tax rate
‘Being a little bit reactionary’
Board member Donna Vann questioned if the school system could have prepared earlier for the potential budget shortfalls.
“I feel like we’re being reactive instead of back however many years ago when we started doing those studies and prioritizing what schools needed what, and then we just kept going with that,” she said.
Toland said that wasn’t wholly accurate.
“We are being a little bit reactionary, but it’s just really current events that have really kind of blown up in our face,” he said.
Toland proposed the school board await the results of a pending system-wide survey of school buildings, which will determine which buildings have the greatest needs. When the survey is done, he said, the board can look at which buildings should be prioritized and which schools might be considered for consolidation.
Board members agreed with Toland’s suggestion. It is not yet clear when the results of the survey will be available.
“We all want to raise supplements for everybody — classified [positions], certified [teachers], principals — but we need a bunch of money to do it, and really, this is the only target. This is the only way to get a bunch of money,” Toland said. “This is a large sum of money that we need. If we were in an increasing ADM [average daily membership], we’re not having this conversation.”
Reporter Lexi Solomon can be reached at lsolomon@cityviewnc.com or 910-423-6500.
This story was made possible by contributions to CityView News Fund, a 501c3 charitable organization committed to an informed democracy.
Good coverage, Lexi…..thanks for ‘reporting’ the news
The School Board needs to identify administrative directives at state and federal level and lobby for elimination of those requirements and the staffing that goes with it.
Any property identified as excess due to consolidation should be sold to highest bidder ASAP so land can be added to tax base. No closed buildings should be retained
Administrators and NEA lobbyists will fight to keep these facilities open as long as possible despite the cost, in hopes of a political reversal.
I questioned where commissioners were when all this was occurring..should they be held accountable..isn’t that part of their responsibility to tax payers who they work for but seem to be doing poor job.
I worked for 27 years in the same school in Cumberland county. The main part of the building was over 100 years old. Floors dry rotted and were replaced (not very well, my last classroom had tiles popping up all over). There was asbestos and black mold removed(mold came back). No construction there except for adding room for a freezer(not even a new freezer, a hand me down from another school).We never got a new media center,had no new assembly room (used cafeteria,try that in this kind of heat with 400 plus bodies). My mother cried the year she and my brother helped me set up my room in a hut. She said it was a disgrace to expect children to learn in a room so in need of repair and decent furniture,not 40 or 50 year old desks,chairs,and tables. Forgive me if I don’t trust our School Boards.
Guess WHY Cumberland County schools have more opportunity scholarships. Poor Upper Management and their trickle down. It’s a real shame.
All money should go to public school and instead of paying for private schools, that’s are taxes, If people don’t like the schools help fix them don’t leave them! Some people can’t afford to put kids in private school and if you can then pay!
Easy to say from the outside.
Having a child that just graduated from CCS, I can tell you the crux of the issue is teacher PAY!
The teacher pay was recently (2’ish years ago?) restructured to nearly force teachers with the most experience to leave and teach elsewhere. This cuts down on quality instruction as well as quantity of teachers.
Yet the budget the School Board just sent to the County included no pay increase for teachers. To make matters worse, turns out the Superintendent and his Cabinet (not to be confused with the Board of Ed members) were approved for a FIFTEEN percent pay increase a few months prior. This group was already making $150k to $200k plus! It was a big slap in the face.
NC in general does not have a great record for public school performance as-is. CCS has often been at/toward the bottom of the list within the state. They were headed in a good direction pre-Covid, but then . . .
So here we sit. Still waiting.
Now, if you had a student in CCS, would you want to wait around and find out how this next school year is going to go? All arrows point to down.
For what it’s worth, the students who received vouchers for this upcoming school year are those with the most financial need. (Likely also those who CCS received the most funding for – think school lunch program students.)
The Board of Ed, Super and Cabinet all know exactly what and why things are happening. All it takes is money to fix it. Though small in the grand scheme of things, that 15% raise should have been target 1 for funding for TEACHERS.