Boone County Schools' departing superintendent, who said early last month that "I have every expectation, and no expectation otherwise, that we will be meeting payroll," didn't rule out Wednesday the possibility that school workers would miss paychecks if lawmakers don't soon approve giving $2.2 million more to the school system.
"I anticipate no problem in meeting payroll," John Hudson had told the Gazette-Mail.
Hudson's new statements to the Gazette-Mail, in an interview Wednesday, came the same day Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin expanded the current special legislative session call to allow lawmakers to consider two more issues, one of which is a bill that would provide the money to the Boone public school system this fiscal year. Tomblin's statement announcing the expanded call said the money would allow the school system to "continue to meet payroll responsibilities while working toward a solution to address significant shortfalls caused by an unprecedented drop in local property tax collections."
Deputy State Schools Superintendent Cindy Daniel and Tomblin spokesman Chris Stadelman both labeled Boone's situation "unprecedented."
"The shortfall is so quick and so severe that the governor thought it was appropriate to provide some state assistance," Stadelman said. "They're looking at a shortfall of almost $2.5 million, and the vast majority of that is due to coal company bankruptcies."
He said there's concern that Boone won't be able to meet payroll without lawmakers providing the extra money, which would come out of general revenue.
"We know a lot of schools are struggling," Stadelman said, "but this one was a truly unique situation."
Daniel said neither Boone's school system nor the state Department of Education's Office of School Finance anticipated how big the revenue drop would be, and said the department and the school system have been working together for months to address the situation.
"Probably within the last couple weeks, the realization was that was the only option, really the only option that we had," Daniel said of requesting the supplemental money.
Hudson - who will see a $19,000 raise to his current $131,000 annual salary when he takes a new job as head of Putnam County Schools next school year - said he intends for no one to miss a paycheck and that his belief hasn't changed on the issue since he spoke with the Gazette-Mail last month.
He did say "the supplemental appropriation is very much needed, to meet all of our obligations" and said, if lawmakers don't approve it, there could be "payroll implications." When pressed on what those implications could be, he said he wasn't going to speculate.
Charles Chapman, Boone's treasurer/financial services director, didn't return calls for comment Wednesday. It was unclear Wednesday if the Boone school system could legally deny employees their paychecks even if it doesn't have the money available.
Hudson argued that the supplemental money would make up for what essentially was a miscalculation in how much tax revenue the school system would receive this fiscal year.
Generally, the state school aid funding formula calculates - largely based on enrollment - how much money each county needs to provide what the state considers an adequate education to students.
Through this method, intended to more equally fund property-rich and property-poor counties, the state forecasts how much money a county will raise through its state-set regular levy property tax rates and then provides state general revenue dollars to make up any gap between the local revenue and what is needed to provide that basic education. But the estimates of how much money Boone would raise in property tax revenue were made before coal company bankruptcy filings there.
Jeff Huffman - a Boone assistant superintendent whom the Boone school board voted Tuesday to promote to superintendent for the next four school years - said the county assessor's office estimated that tax collections would drop about $2.4 million from last fiscal year to this one. But he said the drop has actually been about $9.3 million to date, and that unexpected $6.9 million loss represents 17 percent of the county's operating budget.
Boone's school board has received attention in recent months for voting to close three elementary schools and cut 80 positions, but these cost savings won't take effect until next fiscal year, which starts July 1.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1254, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.