Haywood County Schools is working with a tight budget for the coming year. 

After making cuts where possible over the last few years, Superintendent Trevor Putnam told county commissioners last week that the school system was as lean as it could be and would dip into its fund balance for the second year in a row in order to balance the budget for the 2025-26 school year. 

It’s been a few weeks since I wrote a column for this space. Instead, we’ve been fortunate enough to print your opinions. 

I take it as a sign of a newspaper’s health relative to its relationship with readers when we have a lot of letters to the editor or guest columns coming to my inbox.

Haywood County Schools’ stock just keep rising. This year the school system was ranked sixth out of 115 school districts in the state following the release of testing data. This is compared to its seventh place ranking the year prior and 10th place ranking just a few years ago. 

Jackson Community School — Jackson County’s alternative learning center — is the most expensive school in the district per pupil, and now the Board of Education is considering whether it should invest more money into the aging building or relocate the small student population into a larger school. 

Despite having no recommendation to do so from its policy committee, legal advice outlining the complications of such a move, opposition from principals at both high schools and calls for caution from several board members, Haywood County’s school board decided to enact a policy that will require students who transfer from one high school to another to be ineligible for athletics for one full year. 

While a majority of North Carolina voters chose Republican candidate Donald Trump for president of the United States, many split their ticket to elect Democratic candidates to top state offices.

For the second time in two years, Macon County voters have rejected the implementation of a quarter-cent sales tax to bolster funding for local public schools. However, the margin of defeat for the referendum is shrinking. 

The race for state superintendent will determine who will support and advocate for the state’s 2,500 public schools and lead the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). This election cycle, it also a race in which experience in public education is pitted against an outsider to the system.  

A recent town hall in Cullowhee laid out a heartbreaking problem in our public schools, as well as a sensible solution. The problem is hunger. The solution is to provide free meals to all students in our public schools. But, how do we get there? 

Every student in Haywood and Jackson County Schools can expect no cost breakfast and lunch in the coming school year, and Macon County is not far behind in meeting that mark as well.