A recently adopted state budget, local school officials say, will impact funding for both Clinton City and Sampson County schools.
Among the proposals was the reduction of funds provided to low-wealth/small counties. If a county doesn’t qualify for the funds, they will receive 30 percent of the amount of funds that they received the year prior. If the county is ineligible another year, then they would not receive any funds at all during this period of ineligibility.
Clinton City Schools
Clinton City Schools Superintendent Dr. Wesley Johnson said he was overall satisfied that the state finally came to a decision regarding the spending plan.
“We’re just glad to have a state budget; it’s a requirement of the legislators that we’re supposed to have a state budget by July 1 of every year,” Johnson explained. “We just went through a whole school year without having a state budget. It makes it difficult for a superintendent or a school staff to plan the year, but we made it through last year. We’re very appreciative of all the work of our local delegates through our county commissioners.”
Raises for teachers was a key point for many educators within the state. For years, many have felt that the earnings a teacher made during a school year were too low. This motivated teachers across the state to participate in a teacher protest in Raleigh on May 1. In response, the state budget gives all teachers, at minimum, a 5.5 percent increase in wages.
“I think it’s important that our teachers are getting raises; that’s a big thing,” Johnson emphasized. “We always like to see educators compensated. I won’t use the word fairly compensated, but we do like to see them compensated.”
Low-Wealth Allotment Funds was one of the biggest talking points within the budget proposals, but another one that the state proposed was a change in how the state addresses chronic absenteeism within schools. Within the budget, it shows state officials plan to create a two-year pilot program focused on reducing how many repetitive days students miss within a selected school system.
The Department of Public Instruction will choose which system becomes the pilot.
Johnson and Clinton City Schools have already started working on days missed by students.
“We’ve started to work on that as well,” Johnson said. “Dr. William Vann has been working with a select group of administrators, and they’ve been working on our 2026-27 student handbook … to make sure that our handbook matches state guidelines, they’ve changed some language, such as things that used to be called excused and unexcused absences. They have now been changed in the state manual as lawful and unlawful absences.”
Sampson County Schools
While Sampson County Schools’ Superintendent Dr. Jamie King was pleased with teacher raises, he pointed to higher insurance costs that likely will offset those increases to some degree.
“Anytime we can increase teacher and staff salaries, that’s a bonus,” King said. “I feel some concern that some people’s raises do not equal what their healthcare increases went up to, so some people may have gotten a raise, but then they also have to pay more for insurance, so I would argue that that’s not much of a raise…but every penny helps — helps teachers do better, helps our local economy, so I was glad when there was teacher raises in the budget.”
In the 2026 budget, teachers with fewer years of service will get a higher percentage increase than more seasoned teachers.
“It’s always nice to recruit young people in the profession, but we’ve also got to make sure we’re taking care of our veteran teachers,” King asserted.
He addressed the freezing of Low-Wealth Allotment Funds, the amount of supplemental low-wealth funding that the state determines to allocate for each county.
“We actually see a decrease in that this year because of the property re-evaluations that happened last year,” King said.
Because the county collected more in property taxes in the reappraisals, the low-wealth funding was decreased. King explained that there’s a different funding formula used to calculate that information each year.
The county superintendent also spoke on funding for school transportation, in light of the struggles Sampson County had in finding licensed bus drivers this past year. In North Carolina, transportation dollars are given out based on efficiency ratings. The more efficient the bus routes are, the more money the county receives per mile for transportation funds.
“Transportation’s really complicated because it goes based on your efficiency rating, so as the district gets less efficient, they actually get less funding…the purpose there is to really get districts to be as efficient as possible when they’re running their bus routes.”
King acknowledged that Sampson County has more bus driver positions to fill after the implementation of Policy 7400, which led to the loss of 15 employees — cafeteria assistants, custodians, and teacher assistants – who were unable to obtain required bus licenses. He said he’s optimistic about the future of school transportation, though, and is pleased with the new hires so far.
“I think we’re doing a really good job of getting people who have their bus license, so hopefully we don’t run into the bus situation next school year.”
King said the aspect he’s most excited about in the budget is that the state is fully funding Sampson County’s Advanced Teacher Roles model.
“Previously, districts had to fund 25 percent of that, but the state budget has approved to pay 100 percent of those stipends and salary bonuses…I think that’s probably the biggest positive that I have and take from the budget,” King concluded.
King said it’s really exciting that both sides of the House and the Senate support Advanced Teacher Roles through coaching teachers and providing teachers with more professional development.