A rural Northeast Oklahoma school district is scrambling to address a nearly half-million-dollar budget shortfall.
After dozens of students left Caney Valley Public Schools in 2024 and 2025, the district’s share of state and federal funding decreased, but administrators failed to account for the change in the district’s budget, spending thousands on teachers they couldn’t afford.
Overencumbered funds went unnoticed until the end of April 2026, when Caney Valley’s financial advisor, Jeff Lay, notified district Superintendent Steven Cantrell that the financial records were inconsistent. By that time, it was already too late in the academic year to implement a reduction in force, since district employees were owed paychecks for the hours they had worked…