Wake teachers could get smaller raises. Here’s why school board made call.
Wake County teachers are being asked to take smaller local raises in order to help avoid raising dental costs for all employees.
The school board approved a budget proposal on Tuesday that asks the Wake County Board of Commissioners for a $40.3 million increase in local funding for the 2025-26 school year. The school board wanted to avoid asking for a $60 million increase, so the budget includes reducing teacher raises, changing school thermostat settings and cutting positions.
The budget was approved in a 6-3 vote. Board members Cheryl Caulfield, Christina Gordon and Wing Ng were the dissenting votes.
“I can not support or agree to a budget that has this many cuts,” Gordon said.
The budget was approved over the objections of school employees, who had urged the school board not to send commissioners a budget with cuts in positions.
“A budget is not a wish list,” said school board chair Chris Heagarty. “It’s a detailed plan for how you spend the money you expect to receive and that can be very, very difficult.
“With inadequate state funding and limited county funding, we have to be realistic and responsible about how to plan to spend the funds that we expect we will receive.”
The Democratic majority on the school board blamed the Republican-controlled state legislature for not providing enough money for public schools to avoid budget cuts. Board members complained about how the state has increased funding for private school vouchers.
“The General Assembly must and can and should do better as it relates to public education, because public education is a public good that all of us deserve,” said school board vice chair Tyler Swanson.
$5 million gap in proposed county funding
The school board is asking commissioners to provide $742.9 million of its $2.3 billion operating budget.
All the school board’s budget cutting might not be enough, though.
On Monday, Wake County Manager David Ellis recommended a $35 million increase in school funding — $5.3 million less than the school board’s request. Commissioners will vote on their budget in June.
“I’m really hopeful they’ll get to $40 million by their June vote,” said school board member Sam Hershey.
Heagarty said fully funding the $40.3 million increase is a “reasonable and responsible ask.”
“We know that property taxes are a burden,” Heagarty said. “But we also know that we are asking for the minimum amount needed to keep our schools operating and to take care of our students.”
Smaller local teacher pay raises
School administrators had identified $60 million in needs this year. In March Superintendent Robert Taylor proposed a budget that included $18.7 million in budget cuts, called “strategic repurposing.”
Originally, the cuts included reducing maintenance spending by $600,000 and saving $2.5 million by eliminating employer contributions to employee dental insurance. The dental changes would have impacted 16,000 employees by costing them $28 more per month, or $336 annually.
The board asked staff to come up with alternative cuts to restore the maintenance spending and the employer dental contributions. One of the alternative cuts approved by the board is to give teachers a 1.5% increase in the local salary supplement instead of the proposed 3% increase.
Wake uses local dollars to supplement the base salaries for teachers paid for by the state.
Dipping into teacher raises to cover dental costs will help non-teachers, especially the lower-paid staff. But school administrators were unable to answer The News & Observer’s questions on how much it would impact teachers financially to take smaller raises to avoid raising dental costs.
“There is no way that I feel justified in allowing their supplement to be sacrificed to get the resources in the classroom,” Caulfield said.
Another alternative cut approved by the board is to change school thermostat settings one degree higher and one degree lower. Now schools will range from 69 degrees to 74 degrees — when the HVAC system is functioning normally.
The board also agreed to pull $763,701 from the funds used by groups to rent school facilities.
Those three items will allow Wake to cover the dental and maintenance items and avoid a $1 million reduction to the Restart Schools program, which helps schools that are continually low-performing.
Cuts to positions, supplies
Some reductions were nor dropped though. Items still slated to be cut include:
▪ Eliminate the building substitute program where a full-time employee is assigned to each school to fill in for absent teachers. The schools will instead contact substitute teachers to see if they’re available.
▪ Eliminate a secretary position in each high school.
▪ Reduce the number of high school assistant principals by changing the funding formula.
▪ Reduce the number of counselors and social workers by changing the funding formula.
▪ Eliminate vacant school nurse positions.
▪ Remove 10 digital learning coordinator positions.
▪ Reduce spending on instructional supplies by $5 per student.
Wake will try to avoid firing any employees by reassigning them to vacant positions.
NCAE lobbies against budget cuts
Wake NCAE, which is the Wake County chapter of the North Carolina Association of Educators, has urged the school board to ask commissioners for a $60 million increase.
Wake NCAE packed budget public hearings to plead with the district to not make budget cuts. The group made a last-ditch appeal on Tuesday, holding walk-ins to several schools in the morning and speaking at the board meeting in the evening.
“Show public school staff that you appreciate them this week by voting for a budget that requests what we need,” said Christina Cole, president of Wake NCAE, during the public comment portion of the board meeting.
Christine Zaccardi, the librarian at Farmington Woods Elementary in Cary, told the board about overheated classrooms and malfunctioning bathrooms at her school.
“Please fight for no cuts for our kids,” Zaccardi told the board. “We show up every day. We ask the best of them. We bring the best of us, and we need the supplies and the resources to enable to do that each day.”
The budget is personal for school employees, according to Cecelia Joyce, the librarian at Dillard Drive Elementary in Raleigh.
“We are talking about our colleagues, our children and our families,” Joyce said. “We are talking about our friends and colleagues losing their jobs.”
This story was originally published May 6, 2025 at 8:15 PM.
