WakeEd Advocates For Budget

Lately, WakeEd Partnership has worked to advocate for Wake County Public School System around the latest budget.

In June, President Steve Parrott and I attended a meeting of the Wake County Commissioners to advocate for fully funding the budget for WCPSS (Video below). In the end the County Commission voted to approve a 2016-17 budget that left an $11.8 million deficit in next year’s proposed school district operating budget, which had planned for a $35.7 million increase.

This is on top of an expected additional $5 million shortfall in local funding caused by anticipated changes in the state budget. Since the local salary supplement is a percentage of the state’s base salary schedule, a larger pay raise will in turn increase local salary spending. Now WCPSS is trying to find a way to make ends meet.

The Wake County Board of Education met with their financial advisory committee last Tuesday, and they are working with a $15 million gap between what they needed and what they are going to receive. The schools will have to cut one ten-month position from 19 of the elementary schools in the county, which will increase class sizes.

Other major cuts they will be making are to custodial services, heating and cooling services, and central office customer services. They are reducing custodial service from three to two days a week, setting the temperatures to one degree cooler in the winter and one degree warmer in the summer, and placing a 90-day freeze on new hires to central office following a vacancy.

WakeEd has much more coverage of the budget in our latest edition of In Context.

Tim Lavallee

Vice President of Policy and Research