Chapel Hill-Carrboro families want answers as enrollment, budget problems hit teachers
Chapel Hill-Carrboro teachers are learning which jobs will be cut and staff reassigned next year as the district reckons with declining enrollment and tight budgets, according to an email sent to middle school parents.
The news comes as the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools wraps up a reduction in force that will eliminate 114 positions in the schools and central office by June. The school board approved the cuts and other measures last year to cover a $5.2 million budget gap.
Enrollment is driving some cuts, district officials have said. Since 2020, CHCCS has seen enrollment fall by over 1,000 students, and the district could see 93 fewer students next year, Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Scott told the board earlier this month.
The district anticipates having 11,243 students next year.
The board is also wrestling with how to pass a balanced budget this year after depleting the fund balance — a rainy day fund — over the last several years to cover gaps between local funding and rising costs, including teacher pay increases.
Rumors of more cuts have circulated in the last month. Superintendent Nyah Hamlett, who will step down in June, addressed those rumors in her March 13 community update, saying 31 jobs could be affected.
Seventeen teachers have been reassigned, district spokesman Andy Jenks said Wednesday. The fate of the rest is in flux until they know how many employees are retiring or leaving the district, he said. In some cases, expiring teacher contracts may not be renewed.
On Tuesday, The News & Observer obtained a letter to one district employee whose contract might not be renewed next year.
The letter, signed by Hamlett, said the decision was “due to a districtwide reduction in positions necessitated by insufficient funding.”
It noted the school board would make a decision by June 15, and the employee would be added to a list of candidates eligible for future positions for which they are “qualified and certified.”
The school board is scheduled to vote on some of the staffing changes during its closed door meeting Thursday night. The final staffing for each school will be finalized during the master scheduling process this summer, Jenks said.
He and Hamlett emphasized the district is not eliminating world languages or arts courses. Creative solutions being considered include letting students take an elective at another school or having staff teach at multiple schools or cover multiple subjects, Hamlett said.
“Clear information directly from us would have been beneficial,” Hamlett acknowledged in her community message.
“It’s well-recognized that this is a difficult time for some staff members along with the students and families with whom they’ve built relationships,” she said. “We’re working to support our schools through these difficult decisions, while ensuring that our students still receive a high quality educational experience in CHCCS.”
Parents frustrated by changes, rumors
Teachers who spoke with The N&O said they fear retaliation, but shared a collective statement from 19 colleagues.
They are frustrated by not knowing whether they will have jobs, what they will do, and when the final decision will be made, the letter said. They also worry that larger class sizes could affect their ability to provide quality instruction, individual attention, and a safe classroom space, they said.
It’s left them with a “sense of betrayal and confusion,” the teachers said.
“When CHCCS eliminated director positions, it communicated the changes clearly and publicly. Why is that same openness not being extended to teachers? Educators are not spreading misinformation — they are sharing difficult truths and providing key context that the district has failed to acknowledge,” they said.
Marcey Waters, a parent of three students, said parents and students are also worried that losing good teachers and the foreign language programs, in particular, could affect students.
A student petition to save the Latin and French programs had 960 signatures by Wednesday afternoon.
Cutting electives could also make the district less appealing to parents, Waters said. She noted the latest rumors have added to the mistrust among parents after the school board’s vote last year to put high schools on a 4X4 block schedule.
Students on a 4X4 block schedule take four, 80-minute classes in the fall semester and another four classes in the spring, rather than attending a seven-period day and studying the same subjects for a full year.
“We were literally getting emails (before) saying this is not a march to a 4X4 block schedule, but, indeed, it was,” Waters said. “I feel like they’ve lost our trust, and so the email that was sent out (about block scheduling) … that felt like gaslighting. It didn’t feel like damage control.”
The district should take a hard look at reducing the number of central office administrators and consultants being hired before cutting electives and teachers, Waters and others told The N&O.
“Cutting electives is not the way to have a top school system,” Waters said. “We should be offering our students lots of electives. It’s both providing our students a broad education with teachers who are qualified to teach the courses.”
Board still facing budget problems
Schools pay the bills with a mix of local, state and federal money, based on how many students are enrolled. The loss of 1,000 students in the last few years cost the district $8 million, officials have said.
Roughly 85% of the money pays for employees, Hamlett has said, with just over 3% of those 1,861 employees working in the central office. Another 63% of positions are filled by teachers and teacher assistants. Jenks noted that central office employees also include staff who work in multiple schools and bus drivers, in addition to directors and other administrative positions.
CHCCS officials have been asking Orange County for years to spend more money on school programs and higher salaries, to make up for rising costs and state cuts, but the county has only been able to partially fund the multimillion-dollar requests.
Last year, the county allocated $8,822 per CHCCS student. The district reported receiving $17,255.90 in combined local, state and federal dollars, state data shows.
The county commissioners have told school officials to cover any shortfalls with the fund balance — money left over from year to year — but that money is gone, Scott said.
Reports show the district had over $15.5 million banked in 2021 but spent that money covering shortfalls, mostly in the last two years.
The problem won’t get better until the district rebuilds its fund balance, Scott said in a recent board update.
Student enrollment falling across state
State attendance data shows only 39 of the state’s 115 school districts gained students in 2023, and more students are enrolling in private, charter and home school options.
In the Triangle, Durham Public Schools and Orange County Schools each lost more than 5% of their students between 2019 and 2024, while Chatham and Wake counties lost less than 2% of their students, state data shows.
CHCCS saw an 8% decline, while charter school enrollment grew 27%, data shows. The state does not track private or home schools.
A change last year to the state’s private school voucher program is contributing to more middle-class and wealthy families leaving public schools, according to a recent report from the N.C. State Education Assistance Authority. The Opportunity Scholarship program, created to help low-income families, had its income eligibility limits lifted last year, allowing wealthier families to apply.
CHCCS high schools are still seeing modest enrollment increases, but the elementary schools are seeing huge declines, Carolina Demography Director Nathan Dollar told the school board at its October retreat.
That’s in part because fewer children have been born in the district since 2015, but also because fewer families with young children are moving to Chapel Hill and Carrboro, Dollar said.
The biggest enrollment decline was between the 2019 and 2021 school years, when the district’s pandemic response and the rising cost of housing became key issues for families, according to Sue Fox, a real estate professional and parent of two CHCCS students.
Fox, who spoke last year with The N&O, said Chapel Hill-Carrboro still has some of the state’s best schools, but parents are frustrated.
“I think for some parents, (virtual school) was just too much. They had to get them into something that was more like a regular school day,” she said.
Other families moved to less-expensive counties when home prices doubled and interest rates soared, she said. Chapel Hill’s limited housing supply has pushed most three-bedroom family homes to over $500,000, she said.
And more people are waiting until they are in their 40s to buy a home, she said.
“It’s really a shame, because it has created a class of haves and have nots, and it’s largely dependent on when you came of age and entered the housing market. It doesn’t have anything to do with people’s aptitude or ability or even their jobs,” Fox said.
NC Reality Check is an N&O series holding those in power accountable and shining a light on public issues that affect the Triangle or North Carolina. Have a suggestion for a future story? Email realitycheck@newsobserver.com
This story was originally published March 19, 2025 at 3:22 PM.
