2025 Awards for Excellence: Charleston County School District, South Carolina
2025 Awards for Excellence: Charleston County School District, South Carolina
DownloadCCSD has been able to completely transform its budget process in the course of a year, establishing better relationships with departments, developing long-range financial forecasts, making strategic cuts, automating antiquated processes, and investing in programs that drive student achievement. As part of the financial management strategy, CCSD was able to right-size its fund balance, create a leaner and more accurate budget, implement a strategic risk pool to greatly reduce budget buffering by departments, and elevate the finance staff as problem solvers. Budget reforms not only allowed the organization to close a budget gap, but also to focus on student initiatives. As a result, the district is the highest-paying public K-12 system in the Southeast, has zero teacher vacancies for the first time in history, and has experienced the single highest year of growth in student achievement, substantially outpacing the state.
Publication Date: December 2025
Author: Mike Mucha
