Lexington-Richland County School District Five board members gathered to discuss the 2025-26 budget priorities, focusing on teacher raises and potentially raising the millage rate. 

While the board did not receive a budget draft at the workshop, they were able to view and discuss state revenue estimates, local revenue estimates and the reserve fund balance. The budget draft will be provided in a meeting in May.

Eighty-eight percent of the budget goes towards salaries and benefits for employees. Of the remaining budget, 7% goes to utilities and services, 4% goes to supplies and materials and 1% goes to equipment. Around 64% of funds the district receives come from the state, 35% comes from local and 1% comes from grants.

Throughout the past few months, stakeholders including the board of trustees, parent advisory, faculty advisory, student advisory and principals and directors gave their top four priorities regarding the budget. 

Looking across all stakeholder groups, increasing teacher pay was the number one priority while lowering class size and increasing staff pay closely followed. 

Currently, the starting salary for a teacher at the Lexington-Richland Five district is $47,500. As of this budget workshop, the starting salary is at $49,000 and the expense would cost $4,789,290.

If the district were to move the teacher pay scale to $50,000, the estimated cost would be $7,389,789. An increase to $51,000 would cost around $10 million. 

The second priority discussed was reducing class sizes. To achieve this, the district would need 16 additional teachers, which would cost an estimated $1.25 million. 

Catherine Huddle raised the concern of the schools' budget going to non-teaching costs. 

“If we’re trying to pay our teachers more, there’s only two ways to do that: spend less somewhere else or increase taxes,” Huddle said. “Before we increase taxes, I believe we should look at ways that we can save money.” 

The district is still working with Lexington and Richland counties to finalize numbers for millage calculations. While nothing is set in stone, members discussed if they would potentially increase the millage, which would increase property tax bills in the area.

Jason Baynham said he is hopeful the district will be able to protect local businesses in the area, as they are part of who would be affected by an increase in millage.

Huddle mentioned that before increasing taxes, the district should look at programs that were initially meant to be temporary programs, such as the FIVE program, to potentially get cut.  The FIVE program, a virtual education program, was originally set up as a response to COVID-19 but has stayed in the budget. 

She also mentioned looking at administrative positions in the district office and questioned the expense.  Huddle said many individuals have the title of secretary in the district. While Huddle emphasized she's not proposing to put someone out of a job, she said she does believe administrative staff can be moved around. 

Kevin Scully expressed that he would like the budget to reflect the goals of the school board and the district has to compete with others. If increasing the millage and revenue helps the district stay successful, he said, then that is something they have to do.

“It’s not necessarily just a cost on the business because they’re getting a return on their investment in the form of maintaining an excellent public school system for our district,’’ Scully said. “That will inspire other people to move to the district, increasing our enrollment and revenue."

With a new Irmo Gray Collegiate Academy campus that will open in August of 2025, board members discussed how this will impact their student enrollment and budget. 

Catherine Huddle  expressed her concern stating, "There's a good chance we're going to lose kids."

Gray Collegiate principal, Brian Newsome released a statement regarding the new campus and the affect it will have on Lexington-Richland County School District Five. 

No final decisions were made during the workshop. 

The next board meeting will be on May 5 at the Center for Advanced Technical Studies Center, located at 916 Mt Vernon Church Rd. in Chapin.