AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
The Wake County school system is facing more than $17 million in budget cuts to pay for higher-than-expected state raises for school employees this year.
Read more History made on NC high court, and the homesick inmate — Today in Triangle History
According to documents for Tuesday’s school board work session, Wake will need to come up with an additional $17.6 million in local funding to balance this school year’s budget. Wake will need to figure out how to reconcile the budget numbers before it can start paying out the new raises and bonuses to school employees.
Here’s a look at what decisions the school board faces over the next month to get the budget in place.
Wake is North Carolina’s largest school system. It has 19,662 employees, including 10,260 teachers.
Wake built its budget around the projection that state lawmakers would provide school employees with a 3% raise.
Wake was right about the 3% raise for non-certified staff, which includes people such as school bus drivers, cafeteria workers and custodians. But the new state budget includes an average 8% raise for teachers, with the biggest raises going toward beginning teachers.
The new state base salary ranges from $48,000 for a beginning teacher to $59,000 after 25 years of experience. Wake, like many other school districts, also provides a locally funded salary supplement to increase the pay.
In addition, the state budget is providing one-time bonuses in response to no state budget having been adopted last school year. The bonuses are:
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.
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.
Read more Sharna Burgess Reveals If She Would Return to ‘DWTS’ for Season 35
Wake will need another $500,000 to cover higher than expected costs in retirement rate contributions and state health plan hospitalization contributions.
The list of proposed cuts hasn’t been publicly released yet.
School finance staff are expected on Tuesday to present different options to make up the $17.6 million budget gap. Options could include cutting some budget items and taking savings from other line items.
Earlier this year, the school system made more than $15 million in cuts. The cuts include reducing the number of high school assistant principals, not funding planned raises in extra-duty pay, reducing transportation spending and reducing the number of elementary school literacy coaches.
The school board made the cuts in order to only ask the Wake County Board of Commissioners for a $25.3 million funding increase. The commissioners approved the funding even though it raised this year’s property tax increase.
Administrators say the raises and bonuses can’t be paid until the board approves the budget reductions and adopts new employee salary schedules.
The district’s tentative budget timeline calls for the school board to potentially adopt the budget reductions and new salary schedules on Aug. 18. If not, a special meeting would be scheduled for Aug. 25.
The board would approve the salary schedules on Sept. 1 if it’s not done before then. Approval of the salary schedules by Sept. 1 would allow Wake to include the pay raises beginning in the September paycheck.
Employees would receive the one-time bonus by Oct. 31. That’s also when Wake is targeting paying employees their retroactive pay increases for July and August.
Read more See how research funding levels have changed at UNC, NC State in recent years