Interim WS/FCS leader faces funding chasm

Yahoo

4 days ago

A member of the N.C. State Board of Education who has experience as a superintendent is stepping in to help lead the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools deal with a deficit that has exploded in recent weeks to nearly $80 million.
Catty Quiroz Moore will serve as interim superintendent while the WS/FCS Board of Education works to hire a permanent replacement for Superintendent Tricia McManus, who will retire at the end of June, WS/FCS announced Tuesday night.
Moore has spent more than three decades in North Carolina public schools. She currently serves as an at-large member of the State Board of Education and recently completed a term as interim superintendent of Durham Public Schools, where she provided critical leadership during a time of fiscal uncertainty, a WS/FCS press release said. From 2018 to 2023, Moore was the superintendent of the Wake County Public School System, the largest district in North Carolina.
'Fiscal uncertainty' barely begins to describe the problems facing WS/FCS, which have compounded alarmingly the past two months.
What had been announced in March as an $8 million deficit facing the school district for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, now has become $42 million, according to a May 22 letter McManus sent the State Board of Education. The school board will entirely drain its unspent reserves and will still owe the state of North Carolina $18 million, the letter said.
In addition, what had been in March a projected $16 million deficit in the fiscal year that begins July 1 has more than doubled.
McManus told the school board Tuesday more than $23 million in cuts, which include a reduction of over 200 positions, has been identified for the 2025-26 fiscal year, but school officials are seeking another $13 million.
Among cuts under consideration, McManus said: Eliminating transportation for elementary and middle school students attending choice, or magnet, schools would save the district $3.5 million; increasing class sizes by one student would save approximately $3.5 million; and increasing class sizes by two students would save about $6.6 million.
Other possible measures include not completely covering employees' dental insurance, which the district currently does; eliminating out-of-state travel; eliminating staff cellphones; doing only black-and-white printing; and ending the waxing of school floors except for corridors.
Two school board members, Robert Barr and Susan Miller, called for firing McManus and said that Chief Financial Officer Thomas Kranz should have been fired rather than allowed to resign on May 9.
Barr said he often hears from local residents upset about the district's budget shortfalls.
'Our CFO was allowed to resign. In reality, he should not have been able to resign,' Barr said. 'He should be terminated.'
Miller suggested firing McManus on the spot, but her motion violated the school board's rules of order, so it did not come to a vote.
Board member Richard Watts called suggestion of firing McManus 'political grandstanding.'
In a press conference after the meeting, board vice chair Alex Bohannon said firing McManus would be an overreaction.
'I think it can be very easy to look at ... the simple solution, which is, 'I need to find a single person to be able to blame for this, and then I need to hold them accountable and hold their feet to the fire,' and I understand that completely,' Bohannon said. 'I also would say that, like school system finance, the answer to that is really nuanced.'