Alamance officials, ABSS present improvements amid academic concerns

County leaders, school officials and Alamance County’s legislative delegation spent four hours Monday poring over the school system’s finances, facilities and a slate of academic interventions after a bruising year for student performance. The annual meeting on January 15, 2026, brought commissioners and the Alamance-Burlington School System together despite months of public disagreement over transparency, priorities and test scores.

The session, moved this year to the Career and Technical Education Center in Burlington, began with a broad status report from ABSS leadership. Superintendent Aaron Fleming framed the discussion around recent progress in fiscal management and facilities improvements while acknowledging academic setbacks revealed by statewide standardized tests released in early September 2025. Those results put ABSS among North Carolina’s 20 worst-performing systems, prompting renewed emphasis on student achievement.

Officials outlined targeted steps to address those shortfalls. The district said it had reintroduced instructional coordinators at its lowest-performing schools, launched an early warning dashboard to flag declines in attendance, discipline and academics, and put other interventions into place intended to catch and reverse student decline sooner. ABSS leaders controlled the meeting agenda and did not provide copies of it in advance to county representatives, a procedural snag that generated some tension but did not derail the discussions.

Finance and facilities were central to the meeting’s calculus. Chief financial officer Tony Messer reported an improved fiscal picture, citing an increase in financial reserves and a clean audit for the prior year. Chief operating officer Greg Hook warned, however, that capacity pressures will intensify: he projected a dramatic rise in the number of schools operating at or above capacity in coming years and stressed funding needs for security and surveillance upgrades.

Those projections underscore a familiar trade-off for local taxpayers and elected officials: investing in classrooms, safety and staff while maintaining fiscal discipline. County commissioners, including Ed Priola, pressed ABSS on literacy and overall school performance, signaling continued skepticism despite the district’s reported gains. State legislators and commissioners offered cautious endorsement of the district’s plans while urging clearer, measurable outcomes and better information sharing going forward.

For Alamance residents, the meeting highlighted both progress and unfinished business. Improved reserves and a clean audit reduce near-term fiscal risk, but academic recovery and capital demands could shape upcoming budget debates and requests for county or state support. Parents, voters and taxpayers should expect follow-up on the dashboard metrics, staffing changes and capacity plans as the school system implements its interventions and as county leaders weigh funding decisions in the months ahead.