ELKINS — The Randolph County Schools system has alerted the state Board of Education that its 2026 budget has been balanced, but — at least for now — the local school district is still officially in a State of Emergency.

Superintendent Dr. Shawn Dilly told The Inter-Mountain this week that money was found to balance the school system’s 2026 budget, and that state officials have been notified.

“They do know about us balancing the budget,” Dilly said. “I wouldn’t say the worrying is done, it’s done for a short period of time. But there are still some challenges ahead of us with the loss of enrollment, but this does give us a little bit of an opportunity to breathe at this moment.”

Randolph County Schools was placed in a State of Emergency by the West Virginia Department of Education in June, regarding an inability to balance the 2026 budget.

“(Treasurer Brad) Smith and I, as well as other members of our team, regularly communicate with the department (state BOE), at least every couple of weeks if not every week, updating them on information and keeping them apprised of where we are at in our current situation,” Dilly said. “”They just thanked us for the updates and they have been apprised with the updates.”

Smith presented the BOE with budget supplements totaling $683,536.78, which along with additional carryover funds, made balancing the 2026 budget possible.

Dilly said discovering that the 2026 budget could be balanced was a bit of a surprise.

“A lot of what happened with the budget was unexpected,” he said. “For example, there was over $600,000 of additional tax revenues that we could not have known about prior to the actual collections.

That (tax revenues) helped us some and the efforts of the leadership team at both the Central Office and principal level, with them essentially saying no to everything, allowed us to balance it for this year. It was not expected but our efforts did pay off.”

Despite the budget being balanced, Dilly said the district remains in a State of Emergency.

“We don’t know yet if we are off the State of Emergency and we won’t know that until December,” Dilly said.

Dilly believes Randolph County Schools will learn more about its standing during a state Board of Education meeting on Dec. 10.

“I’m assuming that we will be an item of discussion on the state board meeting’s agenda in December,” Dilly noted. “They will determine at that point how they proceed forward.”

In early October, in response to being placed in the State of Emergency, the Randolph BOE voted 4-1 to close the Harman K-12 School, and 5-0 to close North Elementary.

A week later, a public hearing and vote on the closure of the Pickens K-12 School was canceled approximately 90 minutes before it was scheduled to take place.

On Oct. 28, the board voted 3-2 against the closing of Midland Elementary and 4-1 against the closing of Coalton Elementary.

Dilly told The Inter-Mountain this week that the balanced budget news played a role in the decision to cancel the closure hearing for Pickens.

“In part, yes, it did have a level of influence on that decision,” Dilly said. “But there were some other factors that I’m not able to share at this time. Being that is one of the bigger challenges transportation-wise, and some factors such as balancing the budget, we did feel like it was warranted to make some adjustments.”

The next Randolph County Board of Education meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at the BOE office.