Bledsoe County board delays budget vote after hours of debate on raises, bus purchase and grants

The Bledsoe County Board of Education spent extensive time reviewing the 2026–27 draft budget but recessed without adopting it, asking staff for additional cost breakdowns and scheduling a follow-up meeting.

Staff outlined several changes in the draft: because an electric bus tied to a grant would not be deliverable until October, the district proposed swapping purchases so a diesel bus could be received this fiscal year while preserving the electric-bus grant revenue and the corresponding 10% local match for the charger. Staff also added one year of a three-year grant to fund a full-time nurse; that revenue-offset reduced the budget draw by $97,141 from the prior draft.

The board focused on compensation choices as the biggest driver of the draft’s gap. The proposed package included a 5.5% teacher raise, mixed percentage increases for other scales (for example, a 3% assumption for upper-tier staff), and a 1.5% one-time bonus. Members debated alternatives — flat-dollar increases for low-paid hourly employees (examples discussed included $2.12/hour or a flat $150 annual adjustment) versus percentage raises — and asked staff to run comparative estimates. "It's going to be slowly trying to reduce what we're spending," one member said while urging a careful look at programs and positions. Dr. Walker warned that the district may need to cut positions to match enrollment if revenues continue to fall.

Board members also discussed uncertainty around a pending voucher bill and its effects on Average Daily Membership (ADM)-based funding; some trustees noted state safety-net and BEP provisions could lessen immediate impact but emphasized there was pending legislative risk. Enrollment figures provided at the meeting showed a current total of 1,359 students, down from roughly 1,488 earlier in the year, which trustees used to test staffing scenarios.

After lengthy exchanges on potential savings (including examining professional development lines, a coding-teacher position, the restored behavior program, and the structure of longevity/bonus pay), a board member formally moved to recess and schedule a follow-up meeting. The board agreed to reconvene the budget discussion the following Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. to receive detailed cost breakdowns (the cost of alternate raise scenarios, the effect of removing the 1.5% bonus, and line-by-line reviews such as PD and the coding teacher).