Gaston County commissioners voted Tuesday to provide an additional $5 million to Gaston County Schools, weeks after approving a flat budget for the district and promising to revisit funding later.
The new funding package includes $2.1 million to increase the local teacher supplement, along with additional money to match state raises for locally funded employees. The funding also ensures W.B. Beam Intermediate School will remain open, ending months of uncertainty tied to the district’s budget challenges.
The measure passed in a 4-3 vote. It came after commissioners wrangled over what to include in the motion and took a short break amid some apparent confusion over the proposed amendments and process. County Commissioner Jim Bailey later made a motion for $8 million – $3 million for supplements and $5 million that the district could use at its discretion – but it went unseconded.
Since passing the budget in May, school and county officials have been meeting in closed meetings to identify the district’s funding needs, amid a push from residents for increased school support.
In a press release after the vote, the county said the $2.1 million supplement increase amounted to “the largest teacher supplement increase in county history.” But the final $5 million also fell short of the $11.3 million in needs that County Commissioner Bob Hovis said were identified in those recent closed meetings.
Commissioner Bob Hovis said his colleagues agreed schools need more funding but expressed concern about using too much of the county’s fund balance, using the district’s financial challenges this school year as an example.
“I don’t think there’s a person on this dais that doesn’t agree that additional county monies need to go to Gaston County Schools to meet real needs,” Hovis said. “The question is how far we want to go into our savings account to manage the county properly, so that we don’t find ourselves in the situation — unintended as it was — that the school district found themselves in.”
Gaston County Schools’ financial stability has been in the spotlight since March, when Superintendent Morgen Houchard asked the county for a 10 million infusion to shore up a mid-school-year budget shortfall and save up to 400 jobs.
Houchard told the county the shortfall was the result of a reduction in low-wealth supplemental funds from the state, inflation, the loss of federal pandemic relief funding and “staffing not aligned with declining financial resources.” He also said he’d been assured by a “trusted, long-term employee” that the budget would be balanced, but it was not.
But for many residents who have spoken at school board and county commission meetings, the budget process has also prompted questions about whether Gaston County is adequately funding the school system.
Even before that $10 million infusion, Gaston County Schools made cuts ahead of last school year – and afterward, it had cut 184 jobs ahead of this coming school year. Houchard said at a May school board meeting that all told, the district has cut 243 school level positions and 47 central office positions between July 2024 and July 2026.
And, Houchard had warned, the flat budget from the county would have led to another 75 job cuts.
