The Atlanta Public Schools district will enter the 2025-26 school year at an estimated $100-110 million deficit. 

APS Chief Financial Officer Lisa Bracken attributes the deficit to six main issues including four large investments for literacy, school lunch, teacher pay and administrative initiatives.

“I would say there are five main issues going into this budget year, and since we got into the budget process, a sixth has jumped up,” Bracken said. “The first four are really large investments we made last year that we have to continue to fund, even as we’re not really getting that much more revenue.”

Midtown parent Beth Champ was shocked the deficit was so large. She is concerned about how APS plans to recover in the next few years.

“It’s surprising,” Champ said. “I would be curious about the deficit, where it arose from and what the district’s plan is to alleviate it. Hopefully, it is not cutting programs.”

In the 2024-25 school year, APS terminated its vendor-operated program and transitioned to an in-house model to prioritize school lunch food quality.

“We used to contract out for school nutrition, and now it’s all APS workers,” Bracken said. “We do all of the food and everything we’re buying all by ourselves. We estimated it would cost us an additional $15 million to do that.”

The 2024-25 budget included the largest district-wide teacher pay increase in APS history. On average, teachers received an 11% salary increase and non-teaching staff received up to 5% pay increase.

“The biggest new driver was we gave really large raises to teachers,” Bracken said. “And when you increase the salary for teachers, then you’re also increasing the salary for everyone that supports those teachers. The teachers’ increase was about 11% over the previous year, and that all together was about 60 million for salary increases last year.”

Midtown GO Team Chair Jenifer Keenan believes the salary increase was important, but not fully thought out.

“I think salary increases were deserved and necessary, but I don’t think that appropriate planning was done on how to pay for it,” Keenan said. “So, for example, should it have been phased in over two or three years? Even if you pick out all of those other elements that went into the deficit, which maybe APS had less control over, they would still be at a $60 million deficit just with this salary increase. There should have been additional planning for how they were going to pay for the salary increases.”

In response to Georgia House Bill 538, which required all kindergarten through third-grade teachers to complete a training program in the science of reading, structured literacy and foundational literacy skills, APS Interim Superintendent Danielle Battle implemented a “Readers are Leaders” initiative in 2024 to prioritize literacy. 

“The third big cost was our ‘Readers are Leaders’ initiative,” Bracken said. “So that was a new initiative that was brought about by our Interim Superintendent Dr. Battle last year, and that included putting an instructional coach in every elementary school, providing additional training for our elementary teachers and paying stipends for those teachers when they completed it. That was about a $12 million budget increase.”

APS has used the same Enterprise Resource Planning database system to conduct and manage its administrative and academic functions since 2002. In 2021, APS upgraded its single-tenant ERP system to Infor CloudSuite™ Public Sector.

“We are implementing a new [ERP system],” Bracken said. “We’ve had the old one for years, and we were having a lot of audit findings and issues with it. We determined it was time to implement a new ERP, and that is going to be about an $11 million annual cost for the next five years.”

Combined, these new investments totaled between $90-100 million. However, Bracken also cited the unbalanced enrollment across schools as a contributing factor to the budget issues.

“We have a lot of very small under-enrolled schools,” Bracken said. “So we have some schools that are over capacity, and we have some schools that are very under capacity, and the district has really needed to do some facilities master planning work, or where we’re looking at where kids are going to school, where we need to really look at enrollment trends and make some decisions on making sure that our schools, the enrollment in our schools, makes is supportable and sustainable.”

The per-pupil post-leveling in schools across the district ranges from $10,634 per pupil at North Atlanta High School to $30,026 per pupil at Frank L. Stanton Elementary School. Champ believes the unequal distribution of funds is an issue, but the numbers may not tell the full story.

“Fortunately, my child will be out of the district relatively soon, but it seems like since we’ve been in the district for the last 12 years, the capacity of enrollment and districting to try to create equity has been a huge issue,” Champ said. “I don’t know that there’s an easy solution to figure out how to serve every community equitably because I do think that the cost per student of each school is just scratching the surface. I think there’s a reason why every school exists.”

Gov. Brian Kemp financed a 7% increase for employer healthcare contributions to the State Health Benefit Plan. As a result, local districts, including APS, have to pay a similar cost for non-certified employees including bus drivers and maintenance workers.

“The second one is the only one that was really kind of unforeseen,” Bracken said. “The governor this year, when he did his State of the State proposal, mentioned an increase in SHBP costs, so the benefits that we provide to all of our employees are going up a significant amount. We’re expecting tens of millions of dollars, and that was kind of the curve ball that came in after the fact.”

Champ believes the SHBP updates were important for the APS employees whose healthcare was subsidized.

“I’m generally opposed to only having certain full-time employees have access to healthcare benefits,” Champ said. “I think it’s one of the most important parts of employment is to ensure that people have healthcare because most people in the United States get their health care from their employers. So it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that these essential workers don’t have access to health care.”

APS develops a master budget with proposed money to each school. Midtown principal Dr. Betsy Bockman receives the proposed budget and allocates funds throughout the school with the help of the GO Team. While APS attempted to not cut budgets to the schools, Midtown received a lower budget than expected. 

“Under the budget, under the money that was allocated by APS to Midtown, Dr. Bockman was able to create or add two clerk positions and two interrelated teacher positions, but she had to remove seven teacher positions,” Keenan said. “The bottom line is, with this budget, Dr. Bockman is unable to fund seven teacher positions. Two math teachers, two physical education teachers, two world language teachers, one social studies teacher. So to me, that’s the [impact this deficit has on Midtown] in a nutshell.”

Keenan said one of the main issues with the budget process was the shortened timeline Dr. Bockman had to create a draft budget and the GO Team had to approve the budget. The GO Team received the draft budget the morning they were supposed to approve it and ended up deferring their decision. 

“There was no opportunity for meaningful review, let alone input of the budget,” Keenan said. “Rather than just voting to approve or reject the draft budget at our last GO Team meeting, we voted to defer and we said we needed more information from APS on how they came up with the funds they were allocating to Midtown. During this period, APS increased the original allocation to Midtown by $158,000.”

APS District 3 Representative Ken Zeff said even with the deficit, the school budgets were increased. He credits the GO Team for ensuring Midtown kept a solid budget in place for the 2025-26 school year.

“While school budgets did grow, much of the additional funding was allocated to salary increases for teachers and staff, making the overall budget feel tighter,” Zeff said. “The GO Team worked closely with staff and parents to navigate the financial constraints, ensuring that key priorities were funded while making necessary adjustments. Despite the challenges, Midtown High School has a solid budget in place for the 2025-26 school year, positioning it for continued success. After a lot of hard work and collaboration, the GO Team approved the budget, ensuring that Midtown is ready for another great year. I am grateful for their efforts and commitment.”

As a program administrator for Threshold Community Program, a nonprofit educational organization for neurodivergent individuals, Champ has experience working within a tight budget.

“As a school administrator myself, I empathize with Dr. Bockman’s position,” Champ said. “It’s incredibly challenging to work within what is already a stretched thin budget, and if APS decides to correct its deficit by that impact, then Dr. Bockman’s budget could be reduced. That’s a lot of tough choices that she’s going to have to make, and that the GO Team will have to make in order to make sure that Midtown is still the high-quality school that the community expects it to be.”

Midtown and Jackson are similarly sized APS clusters. However, they have differing signature programs— Jackson uses International Baccalaureate and Midtown uses STEM/STEAM. Midtown was allocated $331,832 for its signature program, and Jackson was allocated $515,664. While the IB program is more costly than STEM/STEAM certification, Keenan believes the disproportionate allocation of funds is problematic.

“IB certification costs more than STEM or STEAM certification, but Jackson is receiving more funds and more resources than Midtown and the schools are about the same size,” Keenan said. “In a way, Midtown is being penalized because we chose a less expensive signature program.”

APS is funding plagiarism checkers, Toddle ($11,000) and Turnitin ($10,000), for IB schools, but not for Midtown.

“APS is paying for two different anti-cheating software programs for Jackson as part of their IB certification,” Keenan said. “Those software programs would be just as useful at Midtown. In fact, Dr. Bockman said she was looking at purchasing one of those software programs. Jackson is getting their software program paid for by APS, because the software program may be required for IB certification, but Midtown is going to have to pay for that exact same software program out of its school specific.”

Champ said she is concerned about these funding differences.

“I want to find out why that disparity exists, and if there’s some kind of advocacy that the Midtown community can do to make sure that the monies we are receiving from the district are equitable,” Champ said. “If part of this sort of distribution of funds is related to the deficit, to make sure that it’s an equitable process where funds are allocated and where funds are cut.”

Zeff said filling in the deficit will involve a few methods. Initially, most of the budget cuts will be to the APS central office.

“The district plans to recover from the budget deficit through a combination of difficult decisions,” Zeff said. “[This includes] deep reductions in the central office. Significant cuts will be made to central office operations to prioritize resources for schools and classrooms. This will include staff reductions, streamlining departments and eliminating non-essential expenditures. By making deep reductions in central office staffing and operations, the district aims to create a more sustainable administrative structure that aligns with available resources.”

While APS tried not to cut its schools’ budgets this year, in the 2026-27 school year, APS has pledged to look more at the schools’ budgets.

“When we’re building our Fiscal Year 2027 budget after we’ve gotten as lean as we can get in the departments, we are going to have to look at the schools,” Bracken said. “That means just double-checking our programming. And we’re going to have to start having those conversations about our smaller schools and our over-capacity schools, and how our footprint across our schools makes sense.”

Zeff said these conversations are difficult but necessary for APS to maintain long-term financial stability.

“[We will also be] evaluating the sustainability of small schools,” Zeff said. “With very small schools becoming increasingly expensive to operate, the district will need to make broader decisions about their future. This could include potential consolidations or alternative uses for underutilized facilities. Once the district has the right number of schools to match enrollment and budget realities, operational costs will be more manageable.”

Bracken said the district will not consider lower teacher salaries, but it may have to slow down salary increases. Additionally, APS is planning to utilize in-house workers as much as possible to avoid spending unnecessary money.

“We’re gonna have to make some hard decisions,” Bracken said. “One of the things I’m recommending is we slow down on compensation, so not going backward, but not giving raises at the high amounts that we have in the past. I do think that we’ve got to make some decisions around where we are contracting services. When we’re paying outside company to come do work for us, but we also have people in house that can do it when, the way, I would refer to that as duplication of services.”

Bracken said that with the deficit, APS is focusing on managing their costs more effectively until they are able to gain revenue.

“We’re going to be concentrating on the expenditures over the next couple of years,” Bracken said. “But in the future years, we have some revenue opportunities. One of the really big costs that we pay every year is towards a pension program. But we will pay that off, probably in late FY 27 going into FY 28 and so that will return to the district about $60 to $70 million that we can use. That will help to kind of offset some of this growth.”

Zeff said the district is also establishing a minimum reserve requirement to establish a more stable financial foundation and ensure it can operate within its means.

“[The district is] establishing a minimum reserve requirement,” Zeff said. “The district has committed to maintaining a minimum level of financial reserves, ensuring there is a cushion to absorb unexpected costs or revenue fluctuations. ”

Bracken is hopeful that once APS begins bringing in revenue, the district can offer relief to its taxpayers.

“Right now, it’s about controlling costs and really getting our arms around our spend and making sure we’re spending less,” Bracken said. “The next years it’ll be about as new revenue comes in or costs fall off. Where do we start giving relief to taxpayers? We’re primarily funded through property taxes, and property taxes can be really cost prohibitive for some of our families. We want to make sure that once costs are controlled and that we’re able to start giving some tax breaks for our families.”