To afford rising costs, Wake schools superintendent proposes budget changes, cuts

Wake County Public School System Superintendent Robert Taylor is proposing budget cuts to afford higher operating costs.

Taylor is proposing a 6% increase in local funding, from $702.6 million to $742.9 million -- but that's not enough to cover the approximate $60 million the district is expecting to need in new local funds, just to meet requirements.

He's proposing to make cuts that he hopes will pay off in future years.
He plans to save funding by $23.6 million in one-time costs from last year and by cutting $18.7 million in recurring funds.

Taylor said the budget proposal is focused on fiscal repsonsibility but also maintaining important programs in schools.

"Everything we've done in this budget is about reducing the impact on our schools so we can ensure quality education continues," Taylor said.

Taylor's budget proposes to cut employer contributions to dental insurance, beginning in January 2026, saving $2.5 million

• Several other cuts would save $9.1 million, including:
• Removing full-time substitute teachers assigned to individual schools and paying only daily substitute teacher rates
• Eliminating the second secretary position assigned to each high school
• Reducing the funding for school supplies by about 7.6%
• Adjusting formulas for funding assistant principals, counselors and social workers

Taylor is also proposing to cut 10 digital learning coordinators, a vacant assistant superintendent position and his own office's travel reimbursements, among other things.

Taylor is also proposing using $21.4 million in savings -- more than half of the $39.3 million the district currently has -- to help balance the budget.

The budget assumes the state will provide $56.8 million more, largely for 3% pay increases and benefit cost increases.
But those add budget burdens for the school system, because the school system has chosen to use local funds to pay for about 3,600 employees. When the state raises pay, the school system must match those pay increases for the locally funded employees, in an effort to avoid pay disparities among employees.
Taylor's budget proposal would match the 3%, raise the local salary supplement by 3% and continue paying extra to teachers who have Master's degrees. That would cost $16.4 million, not including matching benefit increases.
For any local funding increase, the county must, by state law, providing a matching per-student increase to local charter schools, too.

Overall, Taylor expects $47.6 million more for the budget next year, putting the school system's operating budget at just under $2.3 billion.

The public can weigh in on the budget at a public hearing on April 8, during the school board's meeting.
The school district is also hosting three public input sessions. One will be on Friday, April 11 at Fuquay-Varina Middle School, from 6:15 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. Another will be on Wednesday, April 16 at Abbotts Creek Elementary, from 6:15 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. The third hasn't been scheduled yet.
The board plans to vote on a final budget proposal at its May 6 meeting, after which county commissioners will decide what to ultimately fund.
The new budget year begins July 1.

A handful of people spoke on budget concerns during the board meeting's public comment period, largely asking for more funding for schools.
Several librarians asked for -- as they have for months now -- dedicated funding to replace old library books. They said that the lack of dedicated funds creates significant disparities among school libraries, where families having differing means to support their library through contributions or book fair fundraisers.
Christina Cole, president of the Wake County chapter of the North Carolina Association of Educators, urged the school board to ask for more than what Taylor requested, rather than cut anything.
"I will never come up here and speak for 'strategic repurposing,'" she said, using the term Taylor used to describe the cuts. "I hope the district and this school board will at least ask for what we need, then let the [commissioners] decide what they will or won't do."

Myriad rising costs

The school system's budget process is complicated by several things: Four new schools, more students, inflation and the loss of millions of dollars in federal funding.

"The only thing we know for certain is uncertainty," district Chief Business Office David Neter told the school board Tuesday night.

A lot is facing Taylor as he fashions next year's spending plan. Taylor released the first draft of his proposed budget Tuesday night, kicking off a series of school board meetings deliberating over what to request from Wake County commissioners, who will approve a final budget by the end of June.

The proposal is sure to bump up against competing interests from school board members who typically have wish lists for funding far bigger than what the full board ultimately feels comfortable asking for. Commissioners have been more willing in recent years to provide funding increases, approving some of the biggest increases of the past 20 years, largely for additional staff and for pay raises to help with hiring in a competitive job market.

But the school system has been telegraphing financial concerns for the 2025-26 school year for a few months now. In December, district officials asked school board members to brainstorm ways to cut costs. In February, the school board held a joint meeting with county commissioners to discuss all of the pending cost increases. Earlier this month, the district — the biggest in the state — announced a 90-day hiring freeze on nonessential positions in an attempt to boost savings ahead of the 2025-26 school year.

Meanwhile, the district has lost $5 million for next year because of a federal grant cut for teaching training and retention. Since January, Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Education has cut hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and contracts and cut about half of its employees while the administration has called for the department's closure. That's left some school leaders uncertain how other federal changes could affect local school operations.

On Tuesday, Wake school board Chairman Chris Heagarty said the school board is going into its budget sessions expecting to receive the same amount of federal dollars. If major cuts to the federal program occurred, he said, the board would go to Plan B and have to make cuts of its own.

"Everything is on the table," he said.

Next year the district is opening four new schools, and they're expecting to enroll more students. That will mean more local money for additional teachers and other things the state doesn't fund.

The school system's budget is about $2.2 billion, and about $700 million of that comes from the county. None of that includes facility funding, which is typically funded by borrowing and is another $1 billion.

The Wake school board will also hear about some other budget and administrative constraints during a committee meeting Tuesday. They'll discuss updates to their backlog of driver's education behind-the-wheel training — which had wait times of three to five months at the largest high schools a year ago — and challenges to further expansion of athletics programs.

Potential impact of federal education changes

On Tuesday morning, Congresswoman Deborah Ross toured Wake's Hodge Road Magnet Elementary School, which receives extra federal funding as a Title I school, with a higher concentration of lower-income students.

Ross spoke with district leaders -- including Superintendent Robert Taylor and Heagarty -- and school staff, students and parents about the school and changes at the federal level.

Ross is a Democrat and in the House of Representatives' minority party, but she has the power to weigh in on any changes to education proposed in any Congressional bills.

Legal experts and even new Education Secretary Linda McMahon have said Congress is who would ultimately need to approve of the closure of the U.S. Department of Education. Separately, federal funding to states is a Congressional appropriation that's taken place, in many cases, since before the department was even formed. But even without Congress, McMahon has cut half of the department's workforce, and interim leadership cut hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants.

The Trump administration hasn't laid out whether they would like to cut additional federal funding, but some groups that supported Trump's candidacy have called for making funding no-strings-attached block grants to states and reducing Title I funding to eventual elimination over the course of a decade, suggesting states fund it instead. McMahon has floated moving other federal programs, such as education for students with disabilities, to other federal agencies.

North Carolina public schools will receive about $500 million in federal funding for Title I schools this school year; most school are Title I schools. They'll get another $374 million for students with disabilities -- a program funded well below what Congress initially promised it would fund. The state ends up paying for most of it -- well more than $800 million each year -- but North Carolina education advocacy groups say the program is underfunded.

Heagarty said the state doesn't provide enough money to schools overall.

"We don't get enough money from the state to fund these programs, and this promise that, well, 'We'll give money to the state,' well, let's see the money first, and then maybe we can talk about how we want to change these programs," he said. "Right now, a lot of these programs really are operating hand-to-mouth. The margins are so thin, and I just can't understand a world where we're willing to put special education students or poor students on the cutting block to score political points."

Ross said she doesn't support giving no-strings-attached education grants to states, because she fears they would use it to fund private school tuition vouchers instead. Those could benefit affluent families but would leave lower-income and more rural school districts with less money, she said.

Not every state or school system will be able to replace lost Title I funding if leaders chose to eliminate federal funding for the program, Ross said.

"The reason why the federal government does this is to give every child the access to services, to give every child the access to resources," she said. "And when they're saying that we're just gonna let everybody fend for themselves, then that means we're gonna have winners and we're really gonna have losers."

But objections to the federal rules are what have caused some people to favor eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, including Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation crafted Project 2025, which calls for the elimination of Title I funds.

Justice disagrees with the rules surrounding some federal programs and opposed the Biden administration's changes to Title IX rules and interpretations.

If federal funding were instead sent to states with no strings attached, Justice wouldn't argue that the funding should continue to go to public schools.

She said it's taxpayer money and that taxpayers have the right to decide to send their child to a private school if their public school isn't serving them.

"They're not public dollars," she said of the federal funds. "They're taxpayers dollars. They're the parents' money."

Justice doesn't believe people should be concerned about federal changes because she says the education system is "failing" and that big changes are needed.