West Virginia School District Under State of Emergency Due to $2.5M Deficit
Roane County Schools is facing a projected $2.5 million budget deficit due to overspending, according to the state education department.
District employees have gone over budget on the construction of a new middle school and used federal dollars to buy furniture. Some purchases appear to be made without the county board approval, which is required under state code.
'Was everybody asleep at the wheel in Roane County?' asked Paul Hardesty, a state school board member. 'You guys are hemorrhaging cash.'
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter
Earlier this year, the county received a $402,225 advance on their June allocation of the state aid formula to make payroll.
Roane school leaders this week requested another financial advance of more than $300,000 to cover expenses.
'You guys are bankrupt. You're absolutely bankrupt,' board member Gregory Wooten said.
The West Virginia Board of Education declared a state of emergency for Roane County Schools on Wednesday, adding to the growing list of counties now under board control or in a state of emergency.
Declining student enrollment was also cited as a reason that the district should be under a state emergency and develop a plan to correct the problems.
Michelle Stallato is the new county superintendent, just five days on the job. She stood before board members, pledging to fix the problems and do what's best for children.
'We are going in with eyes wide open. I have an amazing staff that are willing to do the work,' she said. 'We understand it's going to be very unpopular. We understand we're going to have to make very difficult decisions.'
County didn't cut positions while student enrollment declined
A report from the West Virginia Department of Education showed that in October 2024, Roane County Schools employed more than 16 teaching and service positions over the funding formula.
'It's projected we didn't make enough cuts into this year and that deficit will grow,' Stallato said.
The county overspent $600,000 on special education in the current fiscal year due to improper budgeting, the report said, linking the problem to 'inaccuracies in data certified by Roane County Schools.'
The state education department also found that Roane County Schools initially purchased furniture with dollars from multiple federal programs, which were unaccounted for in the budgets for those programs.
Roane County serves a little more than 1,600 students. Like many West Virginia school districts, the county is dealing with a declining student population due to the state's overall population loss and students opting to use the state's voucher program — the Hope Scholarship — for private schooling or other options.
The district operates on a yearly budget of $27 million. The school system had close to a $2 million budget surplus in 2021; now there's a projected $2.5 million deficit.
Jeff Mace, president of the Roane County School Board, said they're pushing for more transparency in budgeting and forecasting.
'We were not completely aware of the magnitude of where we're at, even as recent as this current budget preparation,' he said. 'The board understands … the current position now.'
Last month, the state school board took over Boone County Schools because of multiple issues in the system, including potential conflict of interest and potentially using board of education resources to maintain property.
The board also declared a state of emergency in Randolph County Schools for six months due to financial concerns, tasking the county with creating a balanced budget. The district is grappling with declining enrollment and aging facilities, which contributed to the financial issues.
On Wednesday, board members selected Hardesty to serve as president, replacing current President Nancy White who said she wasn't going to seek reelection. Hardesty is a former state lawmaker and Logan County school board member. He has previously served as board president.
'I am humbled by the support and confidence that my fellow board members have placed in me,' Hardesty said. 'This board faces many challenges this upcoming year. We will face those challenges head on, with the purposes of doing what is in the best interests of our 241,000 students across the state.'
West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com.
Solve the daily Crossword
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Yahoo
Opinion: Don't Destroy Institute of Education Sciences, Rebuild It With Students in Mind
The scaffolding that supports the nation's federal education data systems is crumbling. By canceling programs and eliminating staff, including those that fulfilled statutorily mandated functions, the Trump administration has taken a hatchet to the Institute of Education Sciences, the federal agency responsible for collecting, analyzing and making public key higher education data, with no real plan for replacement. This is not strategic reform; it's irresponsible leadership. This system must be rebuilt, and it must be done thoughtfully, with student success as the guiding goal. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Data are among the most important tools available for understanding what's working and what isn't in education. For higher education especially, data are critical for identifying problems, spotlighting solutions and distinguishing colleges and universities that deliver strong student outcomes from those in need of improvement. IES has long provided trusted, rigorous data that inform decisionmaking and drive policy change. But the agency and the insights it supports are now in jeopardy. The administration's cuts have real consequences for students, families, states, policymakers and the country. Every year, over 1 million people use tools powered by federal data to make decisions about college and about higher education policy. The College Scorecard, for example, helps prospective applicants compare schools by cost, student loan debt, graduation rates and post-graduation earnings. However, colleges have reported system outages when trying to upload information to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, which the scorecard relies upon. In addition, staffers responsible for verifying, approving and publishing the data have been terminated — along with 90% of all IES personnel. Equally troubling, the Department of Education canceled the contract that provided training to the professionals who report data to the system, risking the quality and integrity of the information. Related In February, IES did away with other vital data collections, including the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study and its longitudinal follow-up study about the outcomes of first-time college students, the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study. These data sources are essential to answering basic questions like: Who enrolls in college? Who transfers? Who completes their degree? How do students pay for college? How do graduates fare in the workforce? While the contract for the 2024 postsecondary student aid data collection was reinstated June 30, questions remain about the scope of that study and its future, as well its related longitudinal studies. These concerns are especially pertinent as IES remains severely understaffed and the Trump administration has proposed a 67% budget cut for fiscal year 2026. IES' outlook remains wholly unclear. The administration has not outlined a plan nor has it sought, nor has it sought any public input to determine its future. Some officials have advocated scattering the Education Department's responsibilities across other agencies, but they have not explained how they would preserve researcher access and data quality under such a fragmented system. This creates uncertainty for students, families, state officials and researchers — and threatens to destroy a system that took decades to build, undermining the future of evidence-based policymaking. Related A newly announced department senior adviser, Dr. Amber Northern, is reportedly focusing on IES reform. But without swift and transparent action, the damage risks becoming permanent. The nation doesn't need a patchwork fix. It needs a clear, thoughtful and ambitious plan to rebuild its education data infrastructure. That starts with a few key principles: First, protect the principles that made IES so crucial in the first place: statistical rigor, public transparency, data security, privacy protections, data accessibility and responsiveness to stakeholder input. Second, recognize that no state or private entity can replace what the federal government is uniquely equipped to do: mandate consistent reporting across colleges, access administrative data across agencies and ensure national recognize that federal data are a public good, and that changes to them should be informed by stakeholders — states, colleges, education researchers, policy analysts, policymakers and, of course, students and families. Any reform must be conceived with their needs in mind. Related Fourth, think bigger. Set an ambitious vision for the depth, breadth and scope of education data and research that the nation truly needs. America's future relies on the strength of its education system — and education decisions made by students, families, educators, states and policymakers ought to be informed by the best available data and research. If students are to succeed, the nation must commit to providing and learning from the data. As the Education Department and Congress consider their next steps, they face a pivotal choice: continue to erode critical data systems, replace what existed before or seize the moment to design something stronger — a system worthy of the students it's meant to serve.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
School Staff Fear Homeless Students Would Be Hurt by Trump Block Grant Plan
This article was originally published in Chalkbeat. Trump wants to put money for homeless kids into a block grant. School staff are wary. Federal funding for homeless students has helped Metro Nashville Public Schools meet kids' evolving needs for decades. It has sent tutors to family shelters to help children with their school work. It has paid for transportation when families got priced out of their homes and suddenly had to move cross-county. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter And it pays for liaisons like Catherine Knowles, who for 28 years has listened to what homeless families say they really need and tried to respond. That's why the district has a hotel-friendly food pantry filled with items like shelf-stable milk, microwaveable mac and cheese cups, and just-add-water cereal bowls. 'We're giving that recognition of: We really do see what you're going through,' Knowles said, 'and we then have the flexibility to be responsive to that because we have funding and we have dedicated resources.' The Trump administration has proposed doing away with this dedicated funding. The president's Education Department budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 consolidates money for homeless students and 17 other programs into a single, much smaller K-12 block grant. States would get $2 billion, down from the roughly $6.5 billion the federal government spends now. Schools could keep spending that money on the students and activities envisioned in federal law, or on a range of other activities, such as 'promoting patriotic education,' or improving instruction in math, reading, science, and history. In the current federal budget, Congress allocated $129 million to support homeless students with McKinney-Vento funding, named for the 1987 federal law that guarantees homeless children certain educational rights. That's a tiny fraction of the roughly $18 billion the federal government spends specifically on high-poverty schools. Liaisons like Knowles worry homeless students will fall down the priority list if schools no longer get funding specifically to serve them. 'There is such increasing need among students in public education, in general,' Knowles said. 'Without McKinney-Vento dedicated funding specifically spelling out our responsibilities and the rights of students experiencing homelessness, I'm just afraid it could kind of all get lost in the shuffle.' Why Congress set aside money for homeless students The Education Department has said the block grant would give states and schools the ability to spend federal funds more in line with their needs, 'without the unnecessary administrative burdens imposed under current law.' Several Republican governors have said they'd welcome education block grants. And some states, such as Iowa, that are seeking more flexibility in how they spend their federal education dollars have said they would continue to meet the needs of unique student groups, including homeless students. Right now, the federal government gives each state money for homeless students based on their share of Title I funds, which support students in poverty. Then the state awards the money to districts on a competitive basis, because the sum is too small to divide among all of them. Around 1 in 5 school districts nationally get McKinney-Vento funding, which means many districts are required to hire homeless liaisons and meet homeless students' needs without dedicated funding. But school liaisons and advocates for homeless youth are calling on Congress to maintain funding for students experiencing homelessness as a standalone program. In the early days of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, Congress tasked states and schools with rewriting policies and collecting data about students experiencing homelessness. That work exposed gaps in support, and prompted Congress to set aside money specifically for these students in 1990. 'The dedicated funding was about responding to those barriers,' said Barbara Duffield, the executive director of the nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection. In addition to legal protections, 'you also have to have somebody who goes out looking for you, makes sure you have a ride, actually makes sure you can get enrolled.' Since then, McKinney-Vento funding has played an outsized role in under-resourced communities that lack shelters, and 'where the school literally might be the source of services for these families,' Duffield said. Researchers and school staff also point out that students experiencing homelessness have specific needs and greater academic challenges than even other children from low-income families. Homeless students have higher rates of absenteeism and are less likely to graduate from high school than their housed peers, even when compared with other kids living in poverty. 'Just imagine: If you go to a school that has high poverty, you've already been in poverty your whole life, and now you're also unhoused,' said Jessica Smith, a social worker who is the McKinney-Vento coordinator for Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools. 'It looks completely different than a student who just is low-income. Those babies need assistance, too, but our babies need just a little bit more of a focus.' Smith, for example, uses part of her district's McKinney-Vento funding to take high schoolers who live on their own without help from a parent to visit colleges and trade schools. In Tennessee's Robertson County Schools, McKinney-Vento funding provides students experiencing homelessness with clothing that meets the district's dress code. And recently, it allowed the district to hire a translator to work specifically with Spanish-speaking homeless families, said Jennifer Dusky, a social worker who also serves as the district's homeless liaison. The rural community 30 miles north of Nashville is a major tobacco producer and attracts many migrant families. As that population has grown, the translator who handles requests from across the district couldn't meet all the needs of homeless families and still get her other duties done, Dusky said. 'It was a need, for sure, to have a dedicated translator,' Dusky said. 'Homelessness is not a comfortable thing for anyone to talk about, it's very vulnerable and very scary. And then, of course, you add in the fact that you're in a new country, you don't speak the language. There's all these fears and they're very hesitant to talk with us. I totally get that.' When the district hired a Spanish-speaking translator who had experienced homelessness herself, she helped identify, and provide support to, more homeless children. 'You can almost see the comfort just come over their face whenever they see her and talk to her,' Dusky said. But when the district got half as much McKinney-Vento funding from the state this year as it has in years past, Dusky got a preview of the tough trade-offs schools nationwide would face if standalone funding went away. Her district had to decide if it could afford to keep the translator and the person who maintains McKinney-Vento records. For at least the next year, the district will dip into its own pocket to do so, but Dusky isn't sure how long that will last. 'What can our program realistically withstand?' she said. 'What can our community support?' Congress will decide if block grant proposal advances It is unclear whether Congress will approve the block grant proposal for homeless students and other programs. The Senate Appropriations committee rejected the block grant in the bipartisan education budget bill they approved Thursday, and kept McKinney-Vento funding at $129 million a year. The House Appropriations committee won't consider the education portion of the president's budget until it returns from recess in September. Some worry that Congress could repeal all or part of the law that authorizes McKinney-Vento funding to make the block grant legal, potentially leaving homeless students with fewer protections. Just a handful of states guarantee homeless students the same main educational rights outlined in federal law; most do not have any spelled out in state law, according to a recent report by SchoolHouse Connection. Smith in Kansas City, Kansas, worries what that could mean for her students, many of whom stay over the state line in Kansas City, Missouri, because there are no shelters in her community. When that happens, both districts share the cost of transporting the child to school, Smith said, but she's not sure what would happen if Missouri and Kansas decided to spend their block grants differently. 'If we don't have something that focuses on this particular population they'll get overlooked — as they often do already,' Smith said. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
18-07-2025
- Yahoo
West Virginia School District Under State of Emergency Due to $2.5M Deficit
This article was originally published in West Virginia Watch. Roane County Schools is facing a projected $2.5 million budget deficit due to overspending, according to the state education department. District employees have gone over budget on the construction of a new middle school and used federal dollars to buy furniture. Some purchases appear to be made without the county board approval, which is required under state code. 'Was everybody asleep at the wheel in Roane County?' asked Paul Hardesty, a state school board member. 'You guys are hemorrhaging cash.' Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Earlier this year, the county received a $402,225 advance on their June allocation of the state aid formula to make payroll. Roane school leaders this week requested another financial advance of more than $300,000 to cover expenses. 'You guys are bankrupt. You're absolutely bankrupt,' board member Gregory Wooten said. The West Virginia Board of Education declared a state of emergency for Roane County Schools on Wednesday, adding to the growing list of counties now under board control or in a state of emergency. Declining student enrollment was also cited as a reason that the district should be under a state emergency and develop a plan to correct the problems. Michelle Stallato is the new county superintendent, just five days on the job. She stood before board members, pledging to fix the problems and do what's best for children. 'We are going in with eyes wide open. I have an amazing staff that are willing to do the work,' she said. 'We understand it's going to be very unpopular. We understand we're going to have to make very difficult decisions.' County didn't cut positions while student enrollment declined A report from the West Virginia Department of Education showed that in October 2024, Roane County Schools employed more than 16 teaching and service positions over the funding formula. 'It's projected we didn't make enough cuts into this year and that deficit will grow,' Stallato said. The county overspent $600,000 on special education in the current fiscal year due to improper budgeting, the report said, linking the problem to 'inaccuracies in data certified by Roane County Schools.' The state education department also found that Roane County Schools initially purchased furniture with dollars from multiple federal programs, which were unaccounted for in the budgets for those programs. Roane County serves a little more than 1,600 students. Like many West Virginia school districts, the county is dealing with a declining student population due to the state's overall population loss and students opting to use the state's voucher program — the Hope Scholarship — for private schooling or other options. The district operates on a yearly budget of $27 million. The school system had close to a $2 million budget surplus in 2021; now there's a projected $2.5 million deficit. Jeff Mace, president of the Roane County School Board, said they're pushing for more transparency in budgeting and forecasting. 'We were not completely aware of the magnitude of where we're at, even as recent as this current budget preparation,' he said. 'The board understands … the current position now.' Last month, the state school board took over Boone County Schools because of multiple issues in the system, including potential conflict of interest and potentially using board of education resources to maintain property. The board also declared a state of emergency in Randolph County Schools for six months due to financial concerns, tasking the county with creating a balanced budget. The district is grappling with declining enrollment and aging facilities, which contributed to the financial issues. On Wednesday, board members selected Hardesty to serve as president, replacing current President Nancy White who said she wasn't going to seek reelection. Hardesty is a former state lawmaker and Logan County school board member. He has previously served as board president. 'I am humbled by the support and confidence that my fellow board members have placed in me,' Hardesty said. 'This board faces many challenges this upcoming year. We will face those challenges head on, with the purposes of doing what is in the best interests of our 241,000 students across the state.' West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@ Solve the daily Crossword
