During the May 7 School Board meeting there were no monthly financial reports were available. Superintendent Walter Knighton asked the board for a delay in providing the reports until Thursday. “We’ll get the actual documents to you prior to that, so that you’ll be able to see where we are with the tentative, updated budget, along with the financial reports.”

Knighton expressed a desire to make sure information for the fiscal year 2026 tentative budget was thorough, including salary step increases and state health benefit increases. The board plans to vote on the tentative budget on Thursday. “We want to make sure that we’re providing our governance team with the same level of reports that they’re accustomed to, and then also making sure that it’s aligned to our specific budget for FY 26.”

Board member Carolyn Hamilton asked if they would have the current monthly reports.

Knighton responded. “They will be available for us as well. That’s one of the things we’re asking, just for a little grace.”

Board member Rick Barnes asked about vendor payments. “Are you telling me you didn’t pay any vendors last month?”

Knighton replied. “We did.”

Barnes commented. “Okay that’s a report. Hit print. Why didn’t we get it?” He expressed his concern over the lack of last month’s reports. He listed the various reports from last month that were lacking, including the preliminary cash flow report, the expenditure journal summary budget report, and the 396 fund balance revenue report. “Open payables, by law, has to be published.” Barnes commented that these monthly reports had nothing to do with preparing the 2026 budget. “Those reports are easily generated from our system, if the information is accurate in our system, which worries me that you can’t get a report out of the system.”

Barnes speculated as to why the reports were late. “I’m looking at a root cause on why you can’t run a report for this board. And the root cause, it just worries me is, the system’s inaccurate, or the system is wrong, and you can’t generate a report?”

Barnes also asked about the 2026 tentative budget, and Barnes assured him it would be provided tomorrow.

After the meeting, Knighton answered questions concerning the delayed reports. “Because one of the things we wanted to do is to make sure that our information that we had was totally accurate from our financial standpoint.”

The School Board has a new finance director, Jannie Carter. “They’re settling in, and so we are getting the accurate reports as we build our FY 26 budget.”

In addition to the local budget, Knighton also answered questions concerning federal funding in the wake of the gutting of the Department of Education. “We haven’t gotten any communication about whether or not any federal funding is going to be not available for us across the board.”

Knighton expressed optimism that they would receive funding as usual unless they received news to the contrary. “We are expecting the same as we’ve gotten before.”
While federal communication is lacking, Knighton stated that their relationship with the Georgia Department of Education lacked problems. “We don’t have any issues relative to funding from the Georgia Department of Education.”