Sto-Rox school board directors on Thursday will consider amending a three-year-old plan designed to put the district on the road to financial recovery.
The district was placed on what is known as moderate financial recovery status by the state in July 2021 after experiencing multiple years of operating deficits that depleted its financial reserves.
A recovery plan was approved in March 2022, and district trustees – at their 7 p.m. meeting Thursday in the Junior/Senior High School cafeteria — will consider amending that plan to better align with current circumstances.
Since attaining moderate financial recovery status, the district has seen two chief recovery officers come and go, and it also has had two full-time superintendents and three interim superintendents.
Site-level administrative turnover also has been an issue, as only one of five certified principals have served more than two consecutive years in their current positions, according to the proposed amended financial recovery plan. Also, since July 2021, the district has not had a full complement of nine school board directors and currently is operating with three vacancies.
In addition, the district’s student enrollment numbers have declined by an average of almost 6% a year since the 2019-2020 school year. The amended financial recovery plan stated that over a five-year period, from 2020-21 to 2024-25, enrollment fell by 20.1%.
The same report pegged the district’s K-12 enrollment at 933 students as of Oct. 1, 2024, but Nancy Raible, the district’s current chief financial recovery officer, said for the month of August 2025, the enrollment stood at 875 – a drop of about 6%. School district revenue is tied in part to average daily attendance.
Currently, approximately 1,600 students reside within the district, but only about 875 of them attend classes in district buildings. The rest attend school elsewhere, with charter schools being one of the major options that students are pursuing. That’s problematic for the district because it must pay those students’ charter school tuition.
Last school year, students attending charter schools accounted for nearly 40% of the district’s enrollment – more than what the original recovery plan anticipated. More than half of those charter school students attend Propel Montour.
“Propel Montour, and general charter school enrollment, has played a substantial role in the district’s declining enrollment trend, and it will continue to impact its academic programs and ability to operate at scale,” the amended recovery plan states.
Still, Raible and board President Cameron Culliver said last week they believe the district is on the right track, and that the amended recovery plan will help ensure it doesn’t derail.
Raible said even since the current district superintendent, Sonya Crues Coleman, came aboard in May, she has seen “dramatic change” in the way the district operates.
“Things are moving in a very positive way,” said Raible, who was named chief recovery officer in October 2024 and said she generally is on site three to four days per week. “There is structure.”
Culliver, who joined the board in 2020, said he and his fellow trustees are pleased with the growth and progress that’s occurred since the original recovery plan was adopted.
“I would say obviously we’re not done yet,” he said. “We have a lot to do. But where we are today compared to when I first came on the board, and being able to see what’s going on as board president, I’m happy about it. The entire board is happy.
“I think we have a strong board that wants to get things done. We have a strong administrative team that wants to get things done. And a strong recovery officer. We’re a lot better off than where we were before. We still have to deal with things that happen once in a while. But we don’t want the negative to overshadow the hard work that’s being done. There’s a lot of good work being done.”
Raible said the original recovery plan needed to be amended because the district’s “present needs don’t match that original plan.”
“The language in the original plan holds, but we’ve tailored the focus of (the amended plan) to key features that we need to be mindful of as a district,” she said.
Raible said that from what she can tell, the district’s original recovery plan was intended to “mitigate crisis.”
“Now I feel like the district has stabilized in many areas,” she said, noting that the district chose to put $2 million in “empowerment” funding into capital repairs rather than use it to meet day-to-day expenses.
The new plan, Raible said, contains a number of action items, or what Raible called “deliverables” – items that if successfully implemented can serve as evidence of significant improvements and substantial gains that eventually could lead to the district emerging from its moderate financial recovery status. The district would have to make its case to prove it is worthy of shedding that status, but even if it does, it still would be monitored by the state for an additional five years to make sure things were going well financially.
The 112-page amended recovery plan contains 30 pages of initiatives, action steps and monitoring functions spread across five areas: instructional programs and operations; talent management; resource management; culture, climate and safety; and administration and governance.
The plan notes that the district’s failure to raise taxes in the past contributed to the financial recovery designation in 2021. The 2022 recovery plan required an annual increase in local real estate taxes to at least the so-called index limit – the maximum amount the board can impose without a public vote being required – with some exceptions allowed if deemed necessary by the chief recovery officer.
Raible said the board chose to raise taxes to that index limit for the current fiscal year. “That’s the painful part of financial recovery,” she said. “It’s not the first option, but it has to be an option that is considered, whether you’re talking about an original recovery plan or a supplemental plan.
“The community has an obligation to contribute to the funding of its schools.”
Whether similar property tax increases will be forthcoming in the future would depend on what Raible called “the totality of the circumstances.” But the amended plan’s resource management initiatives, which talk about adopting structurally balanced and sustainable budgets, are based on raising taxes to the index limit annually.
In addition to addressing financial considerations, the amended plan also gives plenty of attention to student performance, another area in which the district has fallen behind in recent years.
Raible said the amended plan has more than twice the number of action items aimed at improving academic performance as contained in the original plan. One change made within the last year was the hiring of a curriculum, instruction and assessment director – Tony Paull — and if the amended plan is adopted Thursday, Paul will be tasked with overseeing a number of the action items included in the plan.
Raible said one key feature will be a curriculum structure that flows from kindergarten through Grade 12 and meets or exceeds state standards. Teachers, she said, will know what needs to be taught and how to teach it, and professional development activities will be made available to help them in that regard.
“Our expectations are very lofty now,” she said. “Supports are in place, and when the plan is adopted, everything in there will be adopted as part of a systemic approach.”
Culliver said he spends plenty of time in the district’s schools and he senses a different atmosphere that stems from teachers and administrators working to get the most for and from their students.
“The difference in the mood is almost night and day,” he said. “We had more than 100 more students who took their standardized math testing this year than last year. That alone tells you that staff is engaged and wants to get things done for the betterment of their students. And the students are saying, ‘Bring it to us. We want it – we’ll happily accept it.’”
Raible said she hasn’t heard any negative feedback from community members regarding the amended recovery plan, which has been out for public comment for the past month or so and was discussed at a community meeting last week.
The district’s financial recovery advisory committee is scheduled to meet at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 24, and is expected to consider the amended financial recovery plan, among other things.
Culliver said he’s had “no negative conversations” with community stakeholders regarding the amended plan.
“In the past, whether it was our local focus groups or local businesses, they were doing their own thing,” he said. “Now, everyone wants to work together to reach that end goal. That foundation is the key – if we’re all doing our own thing and not working together, the foundation’s going to be wobbly. If we work together toward the goal, that foundation is going to be strong and we’re going to reach that goal a lot faster.
“It’s an exciting time to be a part of the district.”
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