GLOUSTER, Ohio — Facing a budget deficit exceeding $1.6 million, the Trimble Local School District has asked the state to put it in fiscal emergency status — which could put the district’s management in the hands of a state-appointed commission.
At its meeting on Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024, the board of education passed a resolution to advise the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce and the Auditor of State that it “cannot formulate an acceptable Fiscal Caution Financial Recovery Plan to address the district’s projected current fiscal year deficit.”
Further, the resolution requested that the state “immediately put Trimble Local School District into Fiscal Emergency so solvency assistance can be obtained to pay past due bills, personnel, and maintain operations through the fiscal year-end.”
According to the resolution, the district faces a deficit this year with over $1.6 million “in past due bills.” Additionally, “projections indicate the district may default on payroll, and basic utilities within the next few months,” the resolution said.
“The Auditor of State’s Office is working with the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce on the appropriate next steps for the district’s financial situation,” Ohio Auditor of State Press Secretary David Roorbach said in an email.
Increasing levels of crisis
The state auditor’s office sets three levels of fiscal distress for school districts. The first is “Caution,” followed by “Watch” and ultimately “Emergency.” The level — and extent of state involvement in operations — increases with the severity of a district’s financial crisis.
The auditor’s description of fiscal emergency states, “Following a declaration by the Auditor of State, a commission is created that may assume all or part of the powers of the board of education. The commission develops a financial plan to alleviate the school district’s financial crisis.”
Trimble was previously in fiscal emergency from January 2001 through June 2005. It’s currently one of three in the state operating under fiscal caution, according to records from the Ohio Auditor of State.
“Unfortunately, at that point [under Fiscal Watch], basically, they [the state] doesn’t do a whole lot,”Trimble Local Board of Education member Kevin Coey told the Independent. “If they put us in a state of emergency, that actually helps us in a lot of ways, because it changes how you can [lay off] people.”
Both Coey and Trimble Local Board of Education President Gary Arnold told the Independent that under fiscal emergency, the district could pursue a loan from the state’s solvency assistance fund. The loan would “help our cash flow, until we get back in sync,” Coey said.
Additionally, any spending would have to be approved for the state, he said. “We actually hope they would put us under fiscal emergency. Either way, we’ll right the ship.”
According to records the Independent obtained via public records request, the deficit was caused by mismanagement of grant funding. Both Arnold and Coey confirmed this in separate interviews. The Independent has not yet identified which specific grants were overcharged.
“We’ve uncovered the cause of our cash flow issue,” Trimble Local School District Treasurer Ashley Miller wrote in a Nov. 4, 2024, email to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. ”Grants were severely overcharged in both FY23, and FY24 (by over $1.5 million), and funds were never transferred from the general to cover those negative funds.”
In a Dec. 11, 2024, email exchange with state officials, Miller said the district was working on cutting 30 positions. “However, realistically we could only cut as early as February legally,” she noted. Miller followed up on Dec. 20, 2024, stating that “if we were to make all cuts mid-year, we’d still be left with a $1 million+ deficit.”
The department of education did not immediately return a request for comment. Miller could not be reached for comment in time for publication.
‘We were misled’
The Auditor of State issued corrective action plans following its audits of the district’s operations in fiscal years 2022 and 2021. The auditor’s office issued two new findings following the 2022 audit, which were set to be resolved in 2023 and 2024.
The 2022 audit showed that the district corrected two of three findings from 2021. The unresolved finding noted that it had “not yet been corrected due to the turnover in the Treasurer/CFO.”
The board hired Miller in September 2024. She replaced Kevin Simons, who was treasurer from April 11, 2022, until his resignation effective June 30, 2024. Simons is currently Chauncey’s fiscal officer and now treasurer of the Athens-Meigs Educational Service Center.
State law requires that school district treasurers be bonded; Arnold confirmed that the position is bonded, although he doesn’t believe the circumstances are applicable to a claim of bond violation, because no funds are missing.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the district won’t look hard at how the grants were managed, Arnold said.
“I think sooner or later, we have to do an investigation,” he said.
Simons was treasurer when the grants issue occurred. Both Arnold and Coey described Simons’ reports to the board at the time as “misleading.”
“I don’t want to say ‘lie,’ but misleading us,” Coey said. “I don’t think there was any kind of embezzlement going on, but to me, it borderlines on fraud — when you give misinformation to the governing board.”
Arnold echoed Coey’s sentiments. “I don’t think it was a mistake. I don’t know the reasoning behind it. I don’t think it was an embezzlement. But we were misled,” he said. “We were misled on what we had; we were misled on what our income was going to be.… I don’t know the reasoning.”
Arnold said that if the board knew the reality of its finances, it would have exercised more financial caution.
“We thought we had a surplus of funds,” Arnold said. “[There’s] a lot of money that we spent that we wouldn’t have spent.… And the whole time we were at least a million — at that time — in the red.”
Simons declined to comment for this story.
Both Arnold and Coey expressed disappointment and dismay over the circumstances — both noting that the nature of small, tight-knit communities makes the fiscal emergency even more difficult.
The district has the smallest student body in the county, with fewer than 750 students in the 2023–24 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Arnold said the financial issue has been and will continue to be discussed at board meetings.
“What I can tell the parents is: We’re going to do our best to make sure that kids aren’t harmed by this, and that we can keep our school open, and slowly get ourselves back out and put in safeguards where this doesn’t happen anymore,” Arnold said.
The Trimble Local Board of Education meets at 6 p.m. on the third Thursday of each month at the Trimble Local School District office, 1 Tomcat Drive, Glouster. Its next meeting will be today, Thursday, Jan. 9.
Let us know what's happening in your neck of the woods!
Get in touch and share a story!
