Wake Co, NC: Cutting asst. principals/art classes to pay for SPED
The Wake County school board is weighing its options as it decides how to cut another $10 million from its 2026-'27 budget while preserving special education positions. Meanwhile, educators in the district continue to push for more special education funding.
Faced with passing a balanced budget amid rising costs – and after public outcry last month over an $18 million proposed cut to special education – the school board will consider alternative cuts to assistant principals, arts classes, tutoring and vacant administrative positions.
District staff gave recommendations to the school board's finance committee on Tuesday that included reducing the number of assistant principals at large high schools. Ten schools would lose one assistant principal, and one high school would lose two positions.
"That would save $1.2 million, and we believe it would take several months to fully implement that as we are looking at attrition and moving assistant principals as vacancies occur," said the district's budget director Terri Kimzey.
The school board will also consider reducing allotments for fine arts, PE and world language teachers in ways that could reduce how many of those classes high schools offer, without firing teachers. . . .
"Principals might decide, within this pool, we might have to eliminate a class, right? We might have to not offer as many sections of something because we have another priority need," explained finance committee chair Chris Heagerty.
The new slate of proposed budget cuts come after the school board rejected previously proposed cuts to special education teachers. At the last board meeting, Superintendent Robert Taylor proposed $5.2 million in other budget cuts, including to literacy coaches, and indicated more cuts would be needed.
Heagerty said the district needs to find another $10 million in cuts to keep funding special education services at the same level.
"The $10 million would be for special education, but specifically assistive technology, audiologists, occupational therapists," he said.
The committee indicated that about half of that could come from financial adjustments in the budget that would not affect programming. That leaves at least $5 million in cuts to personnel or programs that the school board must identify.
All North Carolina school boards are required by state law to pass a balanced budget, and many are facing higher costs from inflation and decreasing revenues from lower-than-expected enrollment. The Wake County school board expects to pass a budget by May 15th.
Wake NCAE calls for more special education funding.
The school board held a public hearing on the district's proposed budget Tuesday night that was dominated by comments from Wake NCAE calling for more special education funding.
Media specialist Cecilia Joyce walked up to the school board's podium carrying a clear jar filled with 161 multi-colored pom poms.
"This jar represents 161 hours outside the school day that eight of our special education teachers and I spent working on school work," said Joyce, a member of the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE).
Each speaker carried a jar representing unpaid hours of overtime worked by special education staff. Even with previously proposed staffing cuts to special education off the table, educators said their special education departments are understaffed and overworked.
Wake NCAE has been advocating for the school board to push for a 0.015% property tax increase to fund special education services, as the county faces falling property tax revenue and state lawmakers advance a bill to cap local property tax increases. . . .
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