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Wake County teachers may lose locally funded pay raises in order to help balance the school district’s budget.
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Wake County school administrators said Tuesday that the district will need to make $17.6 million in budget reductions, mostly to balance how the state raised pay for employees higher than expected. The list of proposed budget cuts includes $1.9 million the district planned to provide to increase the local salary supplement for teachers.
The $1.9 million would cover a 1% increase in the local salary supplement Wake provides on top of the base pay provided by the state to teachers. Not funding that local raise would have an impact ranging from $7.34 for a beginning teacher to $14.10 a month for an educator with 31 years experience.
No vote was made Tuesday. The school board must agree on a list of budget cuts before it can adopt new salary schedules and award the pay raises to school employees.
Wake built its budget around the projection that state lawmakers would provide school employees with a 3% raise. State lawmakers approved a budget that has an average 8% raise for teachers as well as one-time bonuses ranging from $500 to $1,750 for school employees.
The state is paying the raises and bonuses for state-funded employees. Wake’s extra costs come from how it matches the raises and bonuses for its locally funded staff. About 20% of Wake’s teachers and 26% of the district’s instructional support personnel such as counselors and social workers are locally funded.
Wake will need an additional $17.1 million in local funds — $13.7 million for the teacher raises and $3.4 million for the bonuses.
Wake will need another $500,000 to cover higher than expected costs in retirement rate contributions and state health plan hospitalization contributions.
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Administrators presented Tuesday a long list of $18.1 million in potential cuts to fill the gap. The list includes:
School finance staff cited how the state raises came in higher than expected as a reason to not spend the $1.9 million in locally funded raises. Teachers will get raises of between 5% and 13% from the state.
Administrators want the school board to approve the budget cuts on Aug. 18. If needed, a special board meeting would be held Aug. 25.
“We need to really have a plan approved by the end of this month,” said school board member Chris Heagarty, who chairs the board’s budget and finance committee.
Administrators want to get the new salary schedules approved by Sept. 1. This would allow raises to be paid in September paychecks.
Wake needs to pay the one-time bonuses by Oct. 31. The district also want to pay the retroactive raises for July and August by the October paycheck.
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This story was originally published August 4, 2026 at 5:34 PM.