Written by By special request from a few loyal followers, the Swamp Fox started digging into the financials of Marion City Schools.
Man… why is it that EVERY SINGLE GOVERNMENT ENTITY is being fiscally irresponsible and spending beyond it means!?
The Swamp Fox is wearing himself out, folks. He can’t keep this up. There’s way too much corruption and shenanigans going on. He’s going to stroke out.
Lucky for you, he’s still alive and kicking–for the time being.
As you can see, MCS will spend over $10 million more on salaries and benefits for its employees in 2026 than it did in 2023. Most of that increase came with the fat pay increases that the district gave to employees in 2025.
Overall budget expenditures have increased by over $11 million since 2023, with revenues only going up by a little over $3.2 million.
The 2026 projected budget has a deficit of $3,905,095 and projections for 2027, 2028 and 2029 only get worse.
According to MCS Treasurer Jolene Carter, if no substantial cuts are made to spending (or drastic increases realized in revenues), the district will run out of cash sometime around 2028 or 2029.
The Swamp Fox hasn’t yet found the current number of employees in the district, but according to the 2023 and 2024 financial audits, staffing increased by 79 employees between 2023 and 2024, from 656 to 735. That’s an increase of 12.04% in one year!
During her presentation at the regular board meeting on the 20th of October 2025, Treasurer Carter made it clear that the district’s deficit projections were known to the Board of Education well before they decided to increase pay.
They seemed to disagree with her, acting surprised by the extent of the deficit and the direness of the situation.
But don’t worry folks! I’m sure after they make several threats to cut certain positions or beloved programs, they’ll then seek an additional property tax operating levy and never make the cuts to spending.
Or who knows? Perhaps they’ll do the above and then do what a lot of school districts are doing nowadays: seek the establishment of a school district income tax.
It’s the same game plan, just a different team.
But in the end, the only way for everyone to win is if the school district starts being good stewards of the taxpayer’s money and goes back to the basics–the fundamentals–of education.