A large crowd, including all five members of the county’s board of supervisors, filled the J. Murray Brooks Auditorium at Thomas Hunter Middle School Tuesday night, with many speakers expressing concern over possible ways to handle an expected cut of roughly $1.1 million in local funds from the school board’s FY26 budget request.
Possible budget reduction options that seemed to draw the most concern from the public involved cutting non-special education regional programs like the Chesapeake Bay Governor’s School, welding, nursing and NJROTC programs, eliminating support of the Mathews High School athletics program, and replacing the division’s custodial employees with contracted services.
“We’re all in a very difficult situation with a shortfall in funding both for the county and the school division,” said School Superintendent Dr. David S. Daniel in laying out the options available to the school board to meet this expected shortfall. He described it as cutting with “a razor blade as opposed to a butcher knife in hacking off things.”
The county has recently taken over much of the maintenance expenses related to the division, Daniel explained, so the FY25 and FY26 budgets don’t align tightly. While this year’s overall request is not actually much higher in a comparison to the current budget, “in new money, we did request about $1.13 million.” Where that came from was a 5 percent pay increase for all staff, the division picking up all the employees’ health insurance increases and adding three positions to the budget, he said.
An easy way to meet the budget cut, he said would be to eliminate the 5 percent raise, pass on all the health insurance costs to employees and not hiring the three new positions. “That’s not what our approach is going to be,” Daniel said. “That’s not a proposed solution.”
Of the approximately $18 million overall budget, $13.4 million is wrapped up in salary and benefits, just under 76 percent, Daniel said. He went over a number of options to meet the $1.1 million difference, from differing pay increases by individual salary scales, reducing pay increases, passing on some or all of the health insurance increases, etc. Absorbing positions currently vacant would result in a savings of about $530,000. Contracting out custodial services would save approximately $30,000 to $35,000 and contracting out substitute teachers would save roughly $20,000, Daniel said.
Cutting non-special education regional programs would save about $105,000. Eliminating Thrifty Spot would save about $28,000, he added. Support of athletics, including intramural basketball, would be about $60,000. Cutting the school division’s participation in Meals on Wheels would be about $15,000. “Not saying that’s the go-to thing, but that’s part of what we need to look at,” Daniel said.
Community comments
Dr. Mel Schursky Jr. read a letter about concerns by parents and community members about possible cuts to programs for advanced learners, including out-of-district programs. In the last eight hours, he said, the letter garnered the support of 64 people. Eliminating such programs, he said, would undermine the district’s commitment to excellence and would possibly lead to a drop in enrollment. “Strong schools create strong, financially sound communities,” he said.
“I know you don’t want to make any of these cuts that are before you,” said Jessica Christensen. “Our boosters’ club does a ton,” but she said not if the athletics program doesn’t get that $60,000, she said.
MHS Athletic Director Amy O’Neil was also concerned about athletics being in jeopardy. “Athletics is not just sports, it’s character building, it’s life lessons,” she said. Regardless of school size, she said, Mathews still has same costs as a 6A school’s athletic program. Of the approximately 300 students at MHS, 199 of them are involved in sports. If athletics is cut, many of those students will likely be going to neighboring school divisions, she said.
During public comment period at the conclusion of Tuesday’s meeting, four of the five supervisors in attendance addressed the school board. Many suggested the school board go back and “sharpen your pencils,” as supervisor Mike Walls said.
“Everything that I heard from this meeting tonight led me to believe this is being perceived as a board of supervisors’ result,” said supervisors’ chair Tim Doss, which he said is not the case. “I don’t understand why the cuts are there.”
This year, Doss said, the schools received $9.7 million from the locality. “You told us that you were not going to put into your budget $958,000 for maintenance,” he said. He then went into great detail about the other budget concerns, indicating that the money the county is anticipating approving would be enough for a 3 percent raise for employees, without any of the proposed cuts to athletics, regional opportunities for students or other programs.
“I have asked, and asked and asked, but the numbers don’t add up,” he said. “I’m not going to sit here and take the brunt of this … We are not the reason that you’re proposing these cuts.”
The complete meeting is available online on the county’s YouTube page (www.youtube.com/@boardtube6008/streams).