Several boards of education across Georgia have been unable to set a final budget and millage rate for Fiscal Year 2026 as of yet, and the Hall County School District is no exception.
Hall County Schools Superintendent Will Schofield explained during the board’s Monday meeting that the district has been unable to set a budget as it has not yet received the annual digest and is trying to factor in changes brought by the House Bill 581 homestead tax exemptions.
To account for the unset budget, the school board passed a spending resolution allowing for the district to expend funds from all sources for the month of July, so long as it does not exceed one-twelfth of the amended FY2025 budget. Adopting such a resolution is required by state law when a BOE is unable to adopt a budget by the beginning of the next fiscal year. The Gainesville Board of Education approved a similar resolution in mid-June.
The school district did provide a preliminary budget, which projects state tax revenue to increase by $6 million, but no change in local tax revenue. However, Schofield emphasized this could be problematic for the school system, as costs are expected to increase for school districts statewide.
Beginning July 1, 2025, expenditures for the county, including health insurance premiums for classified employees, teacher retirement, and step raises for staff, will increase. The district projects the total expenditures to cost roughly $14 million.
The district said premiums will increase to $1,885 per month, per individual. This increase is projected to bring the expenditure to $7.135 million for the coming school year. Schofield said the school systems and other government entities are required to pay the premiums set by the state, meaning school officials can not explore premiums set at a lower rate.
Meanwhile, step raises for team members are expected to increase by $2.693 million.
“Our employees get step raises the longer they stay with us,” Schofield said. “They get more skilled and they are paid for remaining team members. Those will cost us about $2.7 million. Special Education numbers continue to grow significantly in every area.”
Additionally, staff costs, including for special educational professionals, will increase by $1.5 million, and custodial and general insurance costs will increase by $600,000. The employer portion of teacher retirement will cost about $2.17 million.
As of Monday, HCSD officials anticipated that the budget would see a total increase of $10.2 million in expenditures. The district said it projects utilizing $10 to $15 million in reserve funds in order to balance the budget, if they are able to maintain a similar amount of local revenue.
Schofield also said digest exceptions have gone up by 46%, from $2.6 billion to $3.8 billion. He said a recent audit from the Hall County Tax Commissioner's Office of parcels that claim senior exemption found a portion of the parcels may not qualify for it.
“It turned out that over 16% of those properties audited are receiving senior exemptions, and they may not be eligible,” he told the board. “Just for those 16% that was $1.6 million by that time, that could be 10, $12 million a year of senior exemptions that are going out that people should not be receiving.”
School officials estimate that the exceptions would account for nearly $2 million in lost revenue for the school district this year.
Tentatively, the school system anticipates advertising a proposed budget by August 30 and holding two hearings for the budget on Sept 8 and Sept. 22. This would mean tax notices would be released in early November.
Schofield said districts throughout Georgia are experiencing similar delays, though Hall County’s is more complex than most, as it has two exceptions.
“The unexpected consequence that nobody saw coming was that there's only a handful of software companies that handle every community and every school district digest in the state, and they just, quite honestly, don't have the capacity to get all that work done and get all the software updated,” Schofield explained.
