“I don’t want to cut your budget … but I don’t see how we cannot cut this budget,” Mathews supervisor Janice Phillips said during a joint work session Friday morning with members of the Mathews County School Board as the two boards reviewed the school division’s FY26 budget request.
Several other supervisors also indicated that some cuts would be necessary in the budget that was adopted by the school board last month. The board of supervisors is expected to approve the county’s overall operating budget (including schools), and set the accompanying real estate and personal property tax rates, at its April 17 regular meeting.
The $18.17 million budget approved by the school board on Feb. 18 calls for a county contribution of $10.14 million, an increase of $404,000 from the current budget, in spite of plans for the county to take over some of the school building maintenance expenses, such as heating, lighting and sewage, through a Memorandum of Understanding agreement. The school division...