Wake school system wants $28 million more from county to help rebound from COVID
Wake County Superintendent Cathy Moore is calling for a $28.2 million local funding increase this year that she says will help the school district move past the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moore unveiled Tuesday a proposed $1.9 billion operating budget for the upcoming fiscal year that includes $16.3 million in new county funding. She also wants Wake County commissioners to make permanent the $11.9 million increase it provided last year using non-recurring, one-time funding.
Moore said North Carolina’s largest school district needs the additional money to help continue its mission of educating students post pandemic. Moore wants $544.2 million total from the county, or about 28% of the operating budget.
“Public education is the foundation of a strong community,” Moore said. “And despite its heavy toll, the pandemic also revealed the strength of our foundations.
“I believe this proposed budget allows us to simultaneously build on that foundation and weather the remaining challenges of COVID-19.”
David Neter, the district’s chief operating officer, said the funding increase will help with needs such as reducing K-3 class sizes and covering Wake’s share of legislative-mandated salary increases. He said it also covers things such as funding locally paid salary increases and increasing how often instructional assistants work in schools.
The school board will review the budget before adopting it to send to commissioners.
The budget request comes during a year when the school district shrank in enrollment for the first time in nearly 40 years, dropping by 4,234 students. But school leaders say they expect most of those students to return now that Wake expects to be offering daily, in-person instruction this fall for all students who want that option.
Using federal COVID dollars
Wake has operated in a mostly online school environment for much of the past year due to COVID-19 concerns. It wasn’t until this week that middle schools and high schools joined elementary schools in offering full-time, daily, in-person instruction to all grade levels.
Wake has received $83 million in federal COVID relief over the past year for things such as purchasing computers to give to students to learn from home and acquiring PPE and cleaning supplies for schools. Wake is due to receive another $96 million in federal COVID school aid.
Wake is using the federal COVID aid to reduce how much it’s requesting from the county, Moore said. This includes using the federal dollars to hire more counselors, social workers, nurses and psychologists.
But Moore said they want to use the COVID money to cover services over a longer period of time instead of using it all on immediate needs. She said this would reduce the need to cut services and personnel when the COVID funding ends.
Selling budget to county
Moore said they’re cushioning the impact of the funding increase by using $20 million from the district’s reserves to balance the budget.
The new budget could be a hard sell to county commissioners, who are dealing with their own COVID related budget issues.
Last year, the school board asked for a $29.9 million budget increase from the county. Commissioners approved a $11.9 million increase using one-time money, meaning there’s no guarantee that it will be provided again.
“Commissioners generously provided this amount to the school district last year at a time when the future of our local economy was extremely uncertain,” Moore said. “With many of those uncertainties removed, I am requesting that funding become permanent.”
This story was originally published April 6, 2021 at 6:41 PM.
