Carroll ISD is facing a $1.25 million budget shortfall for fiscal year 2025-26, Deputy Superintendent of Business and Finance Chase Park said at the April 20 regular board meeting.
What’s happening?
The budget shortfall is primarily due to one-time payments that were made to district staff in November and April, Park said.
“I know when [Park] came on board just a short time ago we [had] about an $8.5 million projected deficit and we're now down to a $1.2 million projected deficit,” board President Cameron Bryan said.
Park said the district is hoping to recoup that loss through land sales and the selling of the district’s telecommunications towers.
The board of trustees approved declaring the cell towers located at Old Dragon Stadium and Carroll Senior High as surplus property at the April 20 meeting, which allows the district to sell the rights to the easements, according to district documents.
“We will be closing hopefully here in the next couple months on the [Old Dragon Stadium] and then also getting rid of our telecommunications towers,” Park said. “Those are just the initial sales, but we also have our old [Carroll Intermediate School] building property and a couple other smaller tracks that we'll close soon hopefully.”
Diving deeper
The district is in the process of creating the FY 2026-27 budget, which will be brought to the board of trustees for approval in July, Park said.
The district is expected to lose 176 students, which will bring their overall enrollment down to 7,694. This equates to a $1.5 million funding loss, Park said. The state provides funds based on student attendance, so a loss in enrollment decreases the district’s funding from the state.
Payroll makes up 80% of the general fund, so the district plans to right-size staff as enrollment declines to help save the district money, Park said.
“As we lose students, it is imperative that we try to continue to match that loss with a proportionate savings in staff,” he said. “Our goal is to continue to save [over] a million dollars through attrition.”
Additionally, there will be a $2.3 million-$2.4 million compensation raise package for employees added into the budget, he said.
Through a zero-based budgeting process, which involves district staff starting the budget from scratch and communicating with each department to determine what their needs are, the district will save $500,000 in its general fund, Park said.
Additionally, Park said he is looking at the rise of food and fuel costs to make sure next year’s budget can handle those increases.
Park also predicts the district will have to send $22 million of its local revenue to the state due to the recapture program.
What else?
The board of trustees unanimously voted to declare the Durham Intermediate School surplus property and hire a broker from Engel and Völkers to help facilitate the sale of the property at the meeting.
The sale will not occur until after the school closes at the end of the 2026-27 school year.
The district plans to put the money made from this sale into a high-yield account to begin earning interest, Superintendent Jeremy Glenn said.
