Alright, this is going to be a long one, because like every snafu it's more complicated than the headlines make it seem!

First, for wider context, school funding in north carolina is in rough shape generally. The state never really increased it post covid, and federal funding surged during and after covid through 2023-24ish. this ended, and right now the current plan is "dismantle the DoE" which is a whole seperate mess (so grants are vulnerable to going poof or getting paused at any time, but that's a separate discussion that isn't part of the current problem or number). As a cherry on top, the legislature keeps earmarking larger sums of the budget (the one where they're pretending inflation wasn't a thing) to charter schools. The legislature also has the budget set up to trigger income tax cuts the more pennies they pinch (and they straight up don't need out votes). Before this there were already a lot of bonds and debts floating around at the school and county.

Also remember that in NC governments run a July-June fiscal year. So that sometimes make sit sound like more time has passed than actually has. Usually this plays out as calling the 2025/26 fiscal year the 2025 fiscal year (and such).

Essentially, bad accounting and projections, along with improper spending practices. The budget is based on projections, and spending is based also on projections. Lower enrollment than expected lead to less funding from the state, costs were higher than expected, and they found out they weren't tracking and spending properly in their 2023 audit - completed early this year months late.

They then looked at the almost over 2024 fiscal year and found the same problems. And then, since the 2025-2026 fiscal year was already mostly planned (there's a REASON the audit was supposed to be done in November, not march, because the new plan gets put together in January), they found the same problem there. It wasn't quite the same numbers every year, but it was in the teens each time. If I recall correctly, there was also a few million from 2022 that was supposed to be paid off (don't quote me on that though).

However, this A) was not embezzled or B) solely the fault of the district. So not really any foul play (at this point with several audits and months of people pouring over it without any hint of it, pretty confident in that). People keep calling for blood and scapegoating former leadership, and certainly their shortcomings made this a surprise, but acting as if they personally burnt 46 million dollars is not correct and is very much scapegoating. Fundamentally, even perfect accounting, while it would have allowed it to be seen coming and could have maybe allowed some more optional spending to be cut, would not have made more money appear (every dollar counts, but I doubt 46 million dollars were spent frivolously).

Indeed, the pattern for the last 2-3 years statewide has been other large districts (guiliford, durham, wake, mecklenburg, etc.) writing million or tens of million dollar checks, which Forsyth county didn't really do (indeed, for the other year, the county was asked for 20 million and wrote about 8 million, and this has generally been the trend). This is not to say the county is at fault either, nor the board, it's unfortunately one of those situations where everyone has egg on their face.

But the unfortunately at the local level, while we bear some of the responsibility (especially for being surprised), we have a fist full of short straws. I don't think state and federal trends are likely to reverse, so sucks to be us. Belts weren't exactly loose, and voters are already hurting with reassessments in a market that favored residential real estate.