Isle of Wight County Schools Superintendent Theo Cramer will present his proposed 2025-26 budget to the School Board on Feb. 20.

The board has called a special meeting that day, to begin at 5 p.m. in the auditorium of Westside Elementary School.

At its regular meeting on Feb. 13, the board adopted a tentative schedule for drafting the next school year’s budget. In the event the Feb. 20 meeting is canceled due to the heavy snow expected to blanket the area Wednesday and Thursday, the board selected Feb. 24 at 5 p.m. as its backup date for Cramer’s presentation.

The board picked Feb. 27 at 5 p.m. as the date and time for a budget work session prior to the scheduled March 6 public hearing on the budget, which is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. at Westside. 

Another work session is scheduled for March 13 at 5 p.m. ahead of the board’s expected vote on the budget on March 18.

According to IWCS Finance Director Liesl DeVary, the School Board’s approved budget is supposed to go to the Board of Supervisors no later than March 31. The supervisors will then hold their own public hearings on the county’s 10-year capital improvements plan, tax rates and budget, which will include the county’s local appropriation to its school system.

Last year, rather than categorically funding the school system’s operations, transportation, facilities and other line items, the supervisors voted to “lump sum” fund IWCS just under $33 million in operating costs, which the School Board was tasked with allocating as needed. The total amounted to a $2.7 million, or 8%, increase over the $30.4 million supervisors approved for the 2023-24 school year but was less than the $5 million increase the School Board had requested, resulting in the School board revoting in June to adopt cuts to stay within the supervisors’ allocation.

Last year, the supervisors budgeted an additional $9.5 million for one-time school-related capital projects, the bulk of which was earmarked for the replacement of Carrollton Elementary’s heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system that’s on track to begin this spring.

Cramer, at a joint meeting of the School Board and supervisors in October, presented a list of eight one-time expense priorities for 2025-26 that weren’t funded last year. These included replacing or expanding the division’s circa-1955 bus garage, a third-party compensation study, purchasing additional school buses, athletic facility upgrades, a renovation of the Smithfield High School band room, and expanding the division’s use of new weapon detection systems to include its two middle schools.