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ALBEMARLE — In a special-called meeting on Wednesday night, the Stanly County Board of Education held a joint session with county commissioners inside the Gene McIntyre Meeting Room at Stanly County Commons.

The two county boards joined together as Stanly County Schools Superintendent Dr. Jarrod Dennis displayed a slideshow of the SCS 2025-26 Budget Presentation for the upcoming fiscal year, revealing the school district’s budget requests of total local funds that add up to just under $21 million.

Dennis noted that he didn’t expect SCS to receive all the funding as requested, but wanted to present the numbers as assembled by the county’s finance committee.

The total capital outlay funds requested are $17.3 million, while technology funds requests are $1.5 million and the total requested special budget is $1.2 million.

“When we’re in meetings with the finance committee, we’re trying to craft a budget,” Dennis said. “Some of the challenges right now that we have as priorities is teacher quality — and that goes with having younger teachers — and also recruitment and retention of teachers. We’re also going to look at changes in organizational responsibilities. By attrition, if we lose some people, we’re going to see if we can take the responsibilities of certain individuals and parse them out to other individuals.”

The school district’s local funds budget request of $20.9 million, consisting of personnel, new initiatives, maintenance, safety and security, technology, as well as curriculum and co-curricular needs.

The funding request for 2025-26 includes $595,400 for eight new teaching positions, and $236,250 for two dean of students positions for Albemarle High School and Albemarle Middle School.

Positions at the SCS central offices for $1.2 million include the following: accountability director, chief academic officer, student data information director, student services director, safety and security director, maintenance director, chief technology officer assistant, transportation director, assistant finance officer, board members, and an elementary education director.

SCS has requested $1.3 million for 23 student data manager positions and $700,000 for transportation, along with $1.1 million for 14 maintenance positions, $178,000 for eight athletic directors, and $210,000 for athletic coaches.

The Stanly County Board of Commissioners will hold its next regular meeting on June 2 at 6 p.m., while the Stanly County Board of Education will meet the following day at 6:15 p.m.

Both meetings will be held in the Gene McIntyre Meeting Room at Stanly County Commons.