With brutal local tax reevaluations, ever-increasing costs of seemingly everything, and a federal government dead set on cutting costs, local officials who oversee the Triangle’s four public school districts have spent the ongoing 2025-26 budget season really, really worried about balancing the progressive priorities of affordability and strong public education.
That tension was on full display this week at a joint meeting of the Orange County Board of Commissioners and the two districts—Orange County Schools (OCS) and Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (CHCCS)—that it funds.
“I want kids to get a ‘private school education at the public expense’ because that’s what the [state] constitution requires us to do,” Orange County Commissioner Earl McKee told the assembled municipal overseers. “I’m just trying to reconcile how we are going to do this without further forcing people out of this county.”
McKee was specifically eyeing recent and ongoing tax revaluations that have caused deep financial pain for Triangle residents as property values have shot up in recent years. Wake County’s 2024 tax revaluation saw property values jump by an average of 51 percent compared to 2020. Orange and Durham’s ongoing revaluations are predicting a similar value increase of about 50 percent.
Those value increases alone don’t necessarily mean that residents will pay more in taxes—property taxes are calculated as a percentage (the rate set by the county commission) of the whole value of one’s home (measured by the county as set by the market)—but they do mean that any decision to raise property taxes to help fund schools would be that much more painful for property owners.
This is putting local governments in a tough spot. Governments, like businesses, are paying more for the same services. A plurality of your county tax dollars go to fund the Triangle’s public schools, and local taxpayers foot the bill for any needed expansion, improvements, or just continuation costs; Durham Public Schools (DPS), for instance, is facing an expected utility bill increase of $220,000.
Last year, Durham County handed DPS a historic $27 million increase, but warned that such a bump is not sustainable. One commissioner at the time voted against the increase, arguing that the tax burden was “too much to ask,” of seniors and low-income people.
“We have consistently done this every single year, and the board that comes after us is about to inherit this horrible, horrible problem that we’re laying at their feet,” said another then-county commissioner, Nimasheena Burns. Early in the budget discussions this year, commissioner Wendy Jacobs warned DPS to “restrain” expectations.
Wake’s superintendent is recommending $19 million in cuts for next year’s budget, citing insufficient funding for education at the state level, rising operating costs due to inflation, and a state law that requires the school system to transfer an amount equal to the per pupil share of public school funding to charter schools (i.e., the dollars follow the student).
With students moving to charter schools and low birth rates keeping the K-12 population relatively flat, some districts have recently been forced to reexamine their teacher-student ratio allotment formulas.
Of DPS’s roughly $700 million budget last year, about $43 million of local taxpayer money passed through to charter schools as the county has over 8,200 students enrolled in charter schools. DPS’s draft budget will eliminate 112 teacher roles across the district as a result of that allotment shift (though there are currently 158 classroom teacher vacancies in DPS).
In March, about 30 CHCCS educators were told that their contracts wouldn’t be renewed.
“Four or five years ago, even as enrollment numbers were dropping, some of the allotments were held harmless or stayed the same. But as the years have gone on … this is an example of where difficult decisions are being made to ensure the long-term financial health of our district,” CHCCS spokesperson Andy Jenks told INDY in March.
The districts were, in part, able to put off those decisions thanks to $3.6 billion in federal covid-era Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds. The state, though, was required to spend that money by the end of 2024, leaving boards ominously referring to the “ESSER cliff” as the money dropped off.
And more help is not arriving anytime soon from Washington, D.C., where the Trump administration is busy dismantling the Department of Education—which primarily helps fund child nutrition and special education. Durham, Wake, and Orange have each cited funds already lost as a result of the administration’s vicious government-wide cuts.
The Triangle’s districts are also competing heavily with one another to attract staff at every level, driving up some costs.
Until 2013, the state funded higher pay for teachers with master’s degrees. Wake and Durham, in recent years, have brought that back at a cost to local taxpayers. In their expansion budget wishlist this year, CHCCS listed $2.3 million for master’s pay in order to compete with its neighbors, while Durham listed $1.4 million for further expansion.
“We’re finding ourselves losing qualified candidates to some of our surrounding districts because some of those districts have implemented a local master’s level pay supplement,” CHCCS CFO Jonathan Scott said this week.
Bus driver pay is following the same route. In its expansion request, OCS listed $305,000 for bus driver pay, noting that the OCS starting hourly pay ($17.68) lags far behind Durham’s ($19.43). But Durham, in turn, is seeking $400,000 to provide pay supplements for its own drivers, after a year featuring a transit crisis that was caused in no small part by a shortage of drivers compounded by the appeal of $20 per hour starting salaries at Wake and CHCCS.
At the joint meeting in Orange County this week, commissioners and school board members debated the tradeoffs of an increased budget—is it worth raising taxes, which will impact the county’s poorest residents, in order to pay for services like guidance counselors who then help the county’s poorest residents?
“I appreciate the concern that everybody in this room has for the situation the schools find themselves in, the situation the county finds itself in,” said commissioner McKee. “The very last thing I want to be associated with is turning this county further old, wealthy and white.”
“It’s not becoming old, wealthy, and white,” responded CHCCS school board member Vickie Feaster Fornville. “It’s been old, wealthy, and white. We need to have a deeper, broader conversation … because these minority populations in Orange County have been declining for decades and decades.”
DPS, CHCCS, and OCS boards have all officially transmitted their funding requests to their county commissioners, with Wake set to follow in early May. And while a child’s education is figuratively priceless, county commissioners have until the end of June to evaluate those requests and decide exactly how much that education is worth to their taxpayers.
Support independent local journalism. Join the INDY Press Club to help us keep fearless watchdog reporting and essential arts and culture coverage viable in the Triangle.
Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at chase@indyweek.com. Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.