Potentially challenging financial future ahead for Haleyville City Schools

HALEYVILLE - A possibly grim financial picture is being painted for Haleyville City Schools in the next few years, due to an expected significant drop in state and federal funding, meaning the system will have to dip more into local monies in order to fund personnel and services.
“We are going to be relying heavily on local monies this year,” HCS Chief School Financial Officer Candy Marbutt advised school board members at the second of two budget hearings Monday, Sept. 14. “We are going to anticipate that we are going to stay strong in that local revenue.
“Based on current projections, our federal and state revenues are lower than they were last year,” Marbutt added. “We’re hoping that our local revenues will continue to be strong, to pick that up.
“We are going to monitor extremely closely all of our spending,” Marbutt continued to emphasize.  “If it’s not in our budget, we are going to really think about it.
“I have told some of the directors this may be the year we have to start telling people no,” Marbutt emphasized. “(Fiscal year) 2028 is going to be the year that everybody struggles because lots and lots of monies are running out.
“(Fiscal year) 2027 is going to be tight. I’m afraid 2028 is going to be even worse,” Marbutt informed the board. “It’s going to be tough.”
“Everything is going to cost more,” board member Beth McAlpine added. 
HCS Superintendent Dr. Bill Bishop reminded that the state pays schools based on average daily membership beginning 20 days after Labor Day each year.
“Our funding is one year in arrears,” Bishop said. “That’s what helps us and hurts us. It’s a curse and a blessing.”

Special education a major concern

Currently, HCS has 275 special needs students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, Marbutt said. 
“That is 16 more than we had last fall and that grows every day,” Marbutt reminded. 
“The needs are increasing as well as the numbers.”
“Of those special needs, we have 34 that require transportation.  Fifty-four (students) require full-time adult support,” Marbutt explained.
“We have 13 (special needs students) in pre-K. We have 33 in our focus behavior classroom at the elementary school. We have two at the middle school. They have a full-time person all day every day, hen we have six at the high school,” Marbutt explained.
“One student requires counseling, 34 require occupational therapy, two have to have physical therapy and 53 require special education plus additional speech,” Marbutt continued.
“You can see the needs are there,” she added.  “We have three contracted teachers in special ed and two speech language pathologists. 
“We have three contracted paraprofessionals and 19 full-time paraprofessionals,” Marbutt continued. “With each year, the needs are just increasing.”
Some of the intervention programs used for special education include Aspire, used at all three schools to help fill learning gaps, Marbutt said. A grant is also used for transition skills, to help with the greenhouse, including a poultry program, she added.
A grant was also used for printing equipment for the Roar Store and Paw Prints, to help with more artistic skills in the transition classes, Marbutt further explained.
Marbutt reminded board members that official numbers as to exact funding the school system will receive are not known until 20 days after Labor Day.
“You also have to pull out pre-school because pre-school doesn’t count in ADM,” Bishop also reminded.
“Although we have 13 special needs students in pre-K, we don’t get to count those in our ADM,” Marbutt explained. “We don’t get funding for them for transportation, for child nutrition. We don’t get to count Pre-K at all.”
The budget for special education for next year is projected to be around $785,000, which is $88,000 less than the amount with which the school system is currently working, Marbutt emphasized.
“We’ve got more students,” Marbutt reminded. “We are a year in arrears, and the funding has dropped. We didn’t get as much state and federal monies in special education.”
The grants that HCS received for special education for fiscal year 2023 were $877,774; for FY 2024: $779,315; FY 2025: $534,000, and the current year $720,060, Marbutt pointed out.  That total in grants HCS received for special education amounted to $2,911,149, according to Marbutt.
This year, over $1 million grants have been written, but “we know we will not get all of that,” said Marbutt.
“What we don’t get, we’ll have to pick up (from local funds),” Marbutt stressed. “Just keep that in mind. We’ll have to find a way to pay for these.”
Bishop explained that  because funding is going down, more systems are applying for these grants, which makes the process more competitive.
“Would we look at dropping the pre-K program?” board member Chad Tidwell asked.
“That would be almost impossible,” Bishop responded. “It could also be very detrimental.”
Marbutt said pre-K has been funded through grants. 
“I was just asking,” Tidwell said. “If you have to start cutting...”
“If it wasn’t something that was sustainable, you couldn’t continue going in the hole,” Bishop remarked. “I think we will continue receiving our money for pre-K.”

Funding for English Language learners also a concern

Another area of funding concern for the system is in the English language learners population, which is also growing substantially, Marbutt indicated.
Marbutt explained that HCS had 263 EL students throughout the school system, with the number fluctuating monthly.
“Of those students, 119 of them have to have individualized plans written.  Seventeen receive special ed services. We had one that was recommended for retention. We had eight that were able to exit based on their access score,” Marbutt explained.
Serving these 263 EL students are one teacher and four paraprofessionals, she said.
Curriculum for EL students includes English as a second language, language essentials through ACCESS, as well as Elevation and some new software available this year, Marbutt continued.

Advancement & Technology funds helping with facility needs

Concerning facility upgrades, school officials are planning to use $350,000 in advancement and technology funds  to construct a high school football stadium visitor side restroom and weight room facility, Marbutt said.
“That will be our biggest expense in facilities this upcoming year,” Marbutt said.
Other projects are a new canopy at the elementary school for lunch and play areas, she said.
A&T monies, in the amount of $185,000, are also being set aside for a new school bus, Marbutt continued.

Lack of funding state issue

Bishop stressed the reduced funding in state and federal dollars is a statewide issue.
“You have three factors that are playing into this:  the Choose Act, immigration and then job function, employment,” Bishop pointed out.
The CHOOSE Act, passed by the Alabama Legislature in 2024 and signed by Governor Kay Ivey, makes refundable income tax credits called education savings accounts available to parents and guardians to pay for tuition, fees and other qualified education expenses.  This allows students the opportunity to enroll in private schools or choose homeschool.  Beginning with the 2027-2028 school year, the income requirements that have been in place on the program will be eliminated, making all children in the state eligible for it.
Marbutt displayed a chart showing that student enrollment was at 1,639 with 204 employees for FY 2019, compared to 1,474 enrollment with 218 employees for FY 2027.
 After the COVID-19 pandemic, schools systems received a surge of ESSER funds, so school systems such as HCS hired a lot of personnel during that time, Marbutt explained.
However, that funding is going away, she pointed out.
Last year, HCS lost nearly 52 students, equating to three teaching units, according to Marbutt.
“That trickles down to all of the student materials,” Marbutt stressed. “In our Foundation (Program) total line budget,  the way I budget is I take exactly what we had the year before and then I take this year’s numbers.
“I keep the same number of people I have always paid,” she added. “When I got that this year, we were $600,000 short from where we were last year.”
Marbutt showed that about $1 million of the $16 million HCS received in state monies were in grants written for special education.
A pie chart showed that 66 percent of the funding HCS receives is from the state, 15 percent from the federal government and 17.80 percent from local monies.
“With the Raise Act, we did gain a little bit through special ed, but we lost in EL,” Marbutt pointed out.
“We lost 15 students, which cost us over $40,000, which is more than what we are paying our paraprofessional to do that job, so we had to pick that up from local money this year,” Marbutt further emphasized.

Board member asks why student
 enrollment 
dropping

Board member Donna Jones asked if the school system knew of reasons why so many students were leaving the school system.
“My thoughts are because of School Choice, that the parents, some of them, are pulling their kids out to home school, so they can get the funding the legislators put out there,” Jones specified.
“They get paid to home school their kids,” Jones further stressed. “If they are going to have that law - and I have told the legislators this - they need to have stipulations and rules for them to go by, like we all have to.”
Marbutt continued that 69 percent of the spending for HCS is on personnel, which is the school system’s largest asset, with the remaining costs at 31 percent.

System being frugal with finances now

 “In a year, it’s going to be kind of tough,” Bishop said after the budget hearing, “because we don’t know about our A&T (Advancement and Technology) funds. We are probably only going to get a third of that.
“We have to find ways to fund our teachers,” Bishop added, “because our people are the most important, but also we’re not allowed to use certain funds.
“You’ll see projects and other things going on, and people will say, why are they doing this, why are they buying that,” Bishop explained. “We are not allowed to use that money on salaries.”
This means that school officials will have to depend more on local monies than in the past.
“We can’t continue to have shortfalls,” Bishop pointed out. 
“We just have to be frugal,” he added, commending Marbutt on the job she does working with the system’s finances.
“We are always going to try to protect our people as much as we can,” said Bishop. “We would always like to do that through attrition. If someone retires, we may not replace them, if times get tough.
“We’re starting to tighten up now because we see what the projections are doing,” Bishop explained. 
“Fiscal year 2028 is going to be a lean year, but fiscal year 2029 is going to be even leaner, if something doesn't change,” Bishop continued.