Wake County Schools faces 'most challenging' budget yet, with cuts to special education

The Wake County School Board received a grim preview of the district's proposed budget for next school year.

Superintendent Robert Taylor plans to ask the Wake County Board of Commissioners for an additional $25 million from local property tax revenue, even after the district plans to make cuts to its current operations.

The district's chief business officer David Neter said he's been in his position for almost 20 years and never faced a budget situation like this before.

"I've been through a lot of cycles, including through the Great Recession and the early years of the pandemic, and this is perhaps the most challenging cycle I've been through so far," Neter said. "A lot of it has to do with uncertainty."

A major factor in that uncertainty, he said, is that North Carolina is the only state to not yet pass a state budget. That delayed state budget would have funded the current school year, so school districts are already plugging holes in this year's budget because there are no new state funds to cover costs that have risen since the last state budget was in place.

School districts across North Carolina face rising costs for contributions to employees' health insurance, school insurance premiums, utilities, and — now with the war in Iran — fuel for buses. State funds that pass through to local charter schools have also risen, which will account for 11% of the district's funding request from the county, according to Neter.

Projected state budget deficit would affect school funding

Neter further warned that North Carolina is heading toward a major budget deficit for the state government as a whole. Upcoming state tax cuts are projected to put the state in a deficit this year, according to a report by the North Carolina General Assembly's Fiscal Research Division.

"It is a four alarm fire, and the public needs to be aware of it," said school board member Lynn Edmonds.

Edmonds noted that the state's corporate tax rate is set to be eliminated by 2030, adding that this will affect every area of state government, from health and human services to infrastructure and public education. Senate leader Phil Berger has said he's not concerned that those tax cuts will create a fiscal cliff.

"As we go through these impossible budget decisions that we're going to have to make, this needs to be understood that this is what is lying beneath," Edmonds said. "And by the way, the Wake County government, who we will be working with … they will be impacted by this state fiscal cliff too."

$18 million in budget cuts to special education services on the table

Several of the speakers at the school board's public comment session on Tuesday night focused on an email sent earlier that day from WCPSS's Assistant Superintendent for Special Education Services Lisa Allred to teachers and staff in her department.

The message, also announced to families, forecasts $18 million in proposed cuts to special education services. In the internal email, Allred states those budget cuts would "result in a reduction of approximately 130 special education teacher positions districtwide for 2026-27."

"No school administrator should have to tell special education staff they might not have a position next year," said Christina Cole, president of the Wake County chapter of the North Carolina Association of Educators (Wake NCAE) and a special education teacher.

Wake NCAE had already been preparing a petition and budget request centered on what Cole called "the special education crisis."

"We go to our colleagues. We say we can't ask for everything. We can't fight for everything. What should be top priority? What is most urgent? And overwhelming numbers of people said special education," Wake NCAE member and special education instructional assistant Anna Grant told the school board.

Grant said it was "a gut punch" to open an email that day announcing likely staff cuts to special education just as Wake NCAE was launching its campaign to fund those very services.

Unused funds for special education transportation redirected to fuel costs

The school board also voted Tuesday to redirect unused funds budgeted for transporting special education students in order to pay for the rising cost of school bus fuel.

The school board voted to redirect $4.4 million from its contract with the vendor Student Transportation of America to pay for diesel fuel purchases. The average price for diesel fuel in North Carolina has surged to over five dollars per gallon, due to the war in Iran.

"When oil prices go up, that doesn't just drive up the cost of purchasing diesel fuel for our yellow bus fleet. It drives a whole slew of other things up," Neter said.

One parent of a special education student who spoke during the board's public comment session said the district's vendor transportation has often failed to bring his child to school.

"Past three weeks, the transportation vendor assigned for my son has repeatedly failed to pick him up," said Steve Svedi. "Sometimes we'll get a call from him in the morning saying, 'Oh, we'll send a double back after 10 o'clock.'"

Svedi, who is also a Wake County Schools teacher, said unresolved problems like this are "why we've lost trust with the parents."