In a busy five hours of meetings, the Mathews County School Board kicked off the 2026-2027 budget process, addressed plans to consolidate the division into two schools (combining Mathews Elementary and Thomas Hunter Middle School into a single pre-K-seventh grade school), examined the newly released state school performance data, heard from parents concerned about problems in special education instruction at the elementary school, and honored the three MCPS Teachers of the Year, crowning a division-wide Teacher of the Year. Budget work session Tuesday night’s meeting in the Brooks Auditorium at THMS began with a budget work session, where superintendent Dr. David S. Daniel reviewed some of the challenges facing the division as it heads into the upcoming budget process.From FY23 to the current FY26 budget, Mathews has seen a steady reduction in funding from the state level, resulting in a decrease in the overall budget from $18.1 million to $15.9 million. That trend in reduced state con...