Bibb County School District finds $5.5M budget discrepancy. What it means.

The Bibb County School District has identified $5.5 million in unaccounted-for costs in its fiscal year 2026 budget, according to a memo sent to school board members in December and obtained by The Telegraph through an open records request.

Superintendent Dan Sims said the discrepancies were discovered during a routine internal review by the finance department and found miscalculations in salaries and benefits that were not included in the most recently approved budget. The approved budget featured $396.7 million in total expenses, and the district was expected to have $85.3 million remaining in funds at the end of the fiscal year.

“This discrepancy involves unbudgeted costs including five staff members at the innovation center, additional transportation duties and additional duties required to support our athletic events,” Sims said in the memo dated Dec. 19.

Transportation accounted for the biggest share of the unbudgeted costs, totaling $2.4 million. Sims said the extra expenses stem from additional duties of bus drivers, including vehicle inspections, fueling and transporting students for athletic events, and field trips.

The district accounted for the normal base pay of five hours per day each bus driver is scheduled for as part of their regular duties. The items were budgeted for in previous years and were omitted by error in the 2026 budget, Sims added.

Salary miscalculations across 37 schools and departments in the district also accounted for $2 million of the unbudgeted costs, Sims said in the memo.

“Actual school-based and system-level salary calculations did not match the amount budgeted for attrition due to retention efforts resulting in employees remaining with higher earnings,” the memo said. “This caused a ripple effect of increased salary amounts resulting in increased benefits amounts.”

Additional unbudgeted expenses include $577,000 for positions associated with the district’s innovation and technology academy and $458,000 for increased costs related to athletic events, including increased campus police coverage, according to the memo.

As an immediate response, the district has paused all non-essential spending and hiring until further notice.

$8.9M in savings, additional money identified

In wake of discovering millions in unbudgeted costs, the district said it has identified about $8.9 million in additional revenue and cost savings, resulting in a net increase to the district’s general fund balance.

Those include tax revenue earned, from maintaining the millage rate, reduced planned spending on Chromebooks and other program-level savings.

Sims added the district has already begun taking steps to prevent similar issues in the future, including more detailed reviews of anticipated salaries, confirming allocated positions with departments during budget development and improving calculations of personnel additional duties.

In response to the memorandum shared on Dec. 19, the district provided The Telegraph with a statement Thursday. The statement details district leaders’ intentions to ensure accurate and transparent use of public funds.

“As part of this ongoing process, the superintendent shared information with the board of education in December 2025 regarding a proposed budget amendment anticipated for consideration at the January 2026 meeting,” the district said.

The district said it will review transportation and staffing needs more closely, including additional duties for field trips and athletic events, to ensure budgets reflect actual costs for extra hours that often result in overtime pay.

The district said it will also continue reviewing spending and identifying cost-saving opportunities as they prepare the fiscal year 2027 budget.

Sims also said the district’s finance and budget teams will work diligently every day to ensure that the controls in place are implemented, monitored and enforced for best practices during budget seasons.

“This is non-negotiable,” he wrote.

Prior financial concerns raised

The memo outlining the unbudgeted expenses was sent to board members on Dec. 19, one day after concerns about financial oversight and athletic spending were raised at a district board meeting.

Board member Henry Ficklin questioned the lack of detail in a proposed contract with new vendors for athletic uniforms, equipment and reconditioning services for the 2025-26 school year, saying he wanted more information about costs before approving additional spending. “As a board member, I am not going to vote on a blank kind of situation that I don’t know what’s going on,” Ficklin said. “I don’t want to get on another situation where — I think we had to go back and ratify about $3 million of expenditures that we didn’t even know were being spent — and I don’t think that we need to go back down that road again.”

Sims acknowledged the district’s past financial issues during the discussion and said the administration is working to ensure better controls are in place. In May, the district was aiming to address a deficit of more than $20 million. “We recognize that three years of ratification needs came back, and we got beat up when it happened,” Sims said. “This is the beginning of the continuation of a process such that, one, it doesn’t happen again, and two, that we have these contracts taking place in a timely manner so that we can have adequate equipment for our students.”