Halifax County school officials hope to know a bit more about how the school system got into dire financial straits after the North Carolina State Auditor’s office presents its findings in a meeting tonight (Dec. 12).

The auditor’s office has been investigating the county school system’s finances since Superintendent Geraldine Middleton asked the agency to investigate. At the same time, the school system has been transferring available money around within its budget, trying to meet its bills and pay for needed capital projects.

Middleton assumed her job in the summer, long after the present budget was developed under interim Superintendent Carolyn Johnson and approved by the school board.

As Middleton was reviewing the budget, she found expenses had not been properly planned and the school system would fall short of being able to pay all of its bills.

She also found the school system had overspent stand funds, and that practice stretched back at least two years to the administration of then Superintendent Willie Gilchrist, who left Halifax County for the post of chancellor at Elizabeth City State University, and interim Superintendent Carolyn Johnson.

Middleton then asked the state auditor’s office to step in.

In October, Paul LeSieur, director of school business services for the North Carolina Department of Education, addressed the Halifax County School Board in October and was critical of the way the school system had been allowed to spend money, more or less uncheck by the school board and with few accounting practices in place that would have discovered overspending of state money.

He told the board the school system would have to repay more than $840,000 to the state, money the school system does not have and has not yet repaid.

Keith Hoggard, a spokesman for Halifax County Schools, said the school board plans eventually to ask the Halifax County Board of Commissioners for the money, but the board has been waiting for the findings of the state audit before doing that.

In the meantime, the school system has been scrambling to meet its financial obligations. In October Middle eliminated more than a dozen non-teaching jobs, and cut the hours for other non-instructional positions.

That same month the board of commissioners had to advance the school system $250,000 from money it had budgeted to appropriate to the school system later in the year.

The school board fired fire financial officer James Sweet, who came on board with the school system in the summer of 2005 and had been in charge of writing most of the school system’s checks.

And, last week, the school board ask the commissioners for permission to use North Carolina lottery money to pay for repairs to a school roof, repair work to a gym as well as to bleachers at North West Halifax High School.

The lottery apportions part of its proceeds to each school district, based on the attendance figures for each district, but that money must be used on capital projects. Lottery officials will not release the money unless it is presented with a list of what the money will be spent for, along with approval of the local Board of Commissioners.

Hoggard said the school system had originally budgeted the repairs as part of its allotment of county money, but because of the budget shortfall it wanted to use Lottery money to pay for the repairs. That, he said, would free up more than $200,000 in local money to pay for furniture for the new school that will replace Inborden Elementary School and Enfield Middle School.

He said those schools will open in January, and the school system has to furnish them. Lottery money, he said, cannot be used to purchase furniture.