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Wake County voters will choose four members to join the Wake County Board of Education. The News & Observer asked all candidates in this nonpartisan race to complete questionnaires to inform voters about their opinions on key issues. A $680 million school construction bond referendum is also on the fall ballot. Here’s what to know about the election.
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Wake County voters will decide this fall whether funding school HVAC repairs and major renovation projects is worth an additional increase in their already rising property tax bills.
The Nov. 3 ballot includes a $680 million Wake County school construction bond referendum that bond supporters say would cost the average homeowner about $21 more per year in property taxes. Public school supporters are hoping on the continued goodwill of voters who haven’t rejected a Wake school bond issue since 1999 — approving more than $3.7 billion in borrowing since then.
“The school bonds will give millions of much needed dollars to public schools in Wake County to fix the facilities issues facing my school and so many others,” Julia Snowden, a seventh-grade student at Ligon Middle School in Raleigh, said at last week’s school board meeting.
Ligon is the biggest project that would be funded by the school bond. It would provide $133 million to tear down the 73-year-old school and rebuild a brand-new school building in its place.
But groups such as the Wake County Republican Party are opposing the school bond, calling it “just another tax.” It’s not a given that the school bond will pass, said Bob Luebke, director of the John Locke Foundation’s Center for Effective Education,
“People are angry about taxes,” Luebke said in an interview with The News & Observer “People are angry about gas prices, etc. It’s a different environment than if you’re whizzing along in a good economy,”
The school bond forms the major part of Wake County’s plan to spend $832.3 million on school construction projects in the 2027-28 and 2028-29 fiscal years. This includes three new schools, major renovations at nine schools and a variety of other major projects, including HVAC and security upgrades.
Wake plans to spend around $49 million in HVAC upgrades, including:
“Reliable heating and cooling systems are essential to maintaining comfortable learning environments and keeping schools operating on schedule,” Wake says on its website.
The planned HVAC upgrades come after Wake said last year that more than a third of the district’s schools had lost at least one instructional day since 2023 due to HVAC issues.
There haven’t been any school closures yet this school year due to HVAC issues. But multiple schools have had HVAC problems that have led to uncomfortable building conditions.
“I am more than happy to make budget adjustments in order for myself to compensate for the money that I will need to allocate towards the bond to fund HVACs for Wake County schools,” Lindsey Pittman, a Wake County parent, said at last week’s board meeting.
The Locke Foundation hasn’t taken a formal position on the school bond. But Luebke said the HVAC problem is a situation the district worsened by not spending any of the $434 million it received in federal COVID aid on HVAC upgrades.
“They want taxpayers to pay for COVID expenses,” Luebke said. “I think this is more than unfair and unjustified, especially when they had five years of essentially money from the federal government where they could have addressed a lot of this issue, and they passed on it.”
Like many school districts, Wake opted to spent most of its one-time federal COVID aid on salaries and bonuses in an effort to keep school employees from leaving during the pandemic.
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“It’s obvious they have to spend money on it now, and they need to,” Luebke said of the HVAC upgrades.
Bond supporters said the best way to come up with the money to address HVAC and other needs is to pass the school bond.
The district is no longer in a period where it’s expected to see rapid student enrollment growth. As a result, 83% of the money in the new building program would go toward existing schools instead of constructing new schools.
“The students and the educators in those schools deserve to have the very best facilities,” Melanie Dubis, co-chair of Friends of Wake County, said in an interview with The N&O. “Students deserve facilities that are comfortable and safe where they can learn and succeed. That’s what this bond is all about.”
Friends of Wake is the group formed by the business community to promote the school bond
“HVAC units run their natural life and they have to be repaired,” Dubis said. “Roofs need to be repaired, just like your house.
“If the bond does not pass, the county and the school system still has to make these critical repairs. They are only going to get more expensive as time goes on.”
Bonds are the most fiscally responsible way to raise the money because of the lower interest rate the county will get for the borrowing, Dubis said.
Bond supporters have been showing up at school board meetings to urge the public to vote yes on the referendum.
“The bond is not a perfect solution, but the bond is one of the only pieces of power that we have right now to fix what’s broken and to turn the page to the next stage for Wake County,” Emily Malpass, a Wake County parent, said at last week’s school board meeting.
Snowden, the Ligon student, said her typical school day is spent seeing things “that don’t work or are badly in need of repair.”
“A crowded classroom constantly shifting between sweltering heat and freezing cold,” Snowden told the board. “A bathroom with toilets that never work and always need to be fixed. Sinks that leak and dispensers that don’t even dispense anything.”
Pittman, the Wake parent, called the bond referendum a “band-aid” that they badly need right now.
“We are going to have to pay for it either way or risk having to make some devastating decisions about what to cut from our Wake County school budget next year,” Pittman told the board. “This bond is the most responsible method within our reach right now. Voting yes on this bond is a decision to fund our schools.”
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This story was originally published October 13, 2026 at 8:21 AM.