Wake County schools calls upon legislators to uphold veto of HB10

House Bill 10 will divert $350 million from public schools.Photo byVitolda KleinonUnsplash

By Alex Bass

Alex.bass@triangletribune.com

RALEIGH – Wake County Public School System Superintendent Robert Taylor is grateful for his district’s resource abundance relative to more than 100 other school systems statewide. He also is grateful for the support provided by the Wake County Board of Commissioners to enhance educators’ salaries and other programming opportunities.

Taylor, though, is not alone in having a problem with 33% of WCPSS’s budget coming from the commissioners. “The commissioners have to take the heat of raising your taxes so that our kids can get a decent education,” state Senator Dan Blue (D-14) said.

Taylor and the WCPSS Board of Education have called upon the state legislature - in which Republicans hold a veto-proof supermajority - to uphold Roy Cooper’s gubernatorial veto of House Bill 10. This legislation would divert $350 million from public schools and fund private school voucher opportunities at nonpublic entities without legal constraints for meeting the state constitution’s mandate to provide a “sound, basic education” for every child. Missing accountability includes no end-of-course/grade and “Read To Achieve” standardized testing requirements.

“I’m going to repeat that, again. They are not required to test their students, not required,” Taylor said of nonpublic schools. “And many are not required to be accredited.”

North Carolina uses a school’s “Average Daily Membership” - according to how many full-time students are enrolled at each site on a school year’s 20th instructional day - to set a school’s population for funding and staffing purposes. Additional funding is not provided for students who enroll at a site after the 20th day, and funding does not move with the student from one intra-school system site to another.

“We’re using this archaic, outdated Average Daily Membership formula, which leaves a lot of kids unfunded flying under the radar,” WCPSS Board of Education Chairman Chris Heagarty said. “There has not been any public discussion. There absolutely should be.”

Heagarty is referring to the ADM model predating school integration, and when North Carolina’s economy was more agriculture driven. The school year’s calendar was based on crop schedules. It was common for administrators to ask parents to send their children on the first days - even if they would be absent a little while to complete crop schedules - so students would be included in the ADM for funding count.

“What happens if they go to private schools at the beginning of the year, and then come back,” Heagarty asked.

WCPSS’s call for fully-funded public education includes state funding such that local funds from commissioners can be used, Taylor said, for “brick and mortar” needs. Taylor noted that North Carolina LEAs are funded by the state at 13% of what is needed to provide Exceptional Services like Academically and Intellectually Gifted programming. These services include supporting all students receiving supplemental remediation to meet the legislature-mandated “Read To Achieve” requirement.

Students who do not meet this requirement of reading at grade level by the end of third grade may go into a transitional third/fourth grade class or an accelerated fourth grade class, both with the goal of passing the RTA test by Nov. 1 of the next school year. Nov. 1 is after the 20th instructional day.

“Poor rural districts are at a huge disadvantage when they try to fund state education programs,” Taylor said. “We want people to recognize how it impacts other people. When we have to use local tax dollars to support those initiatives, it decreases our ability to focus on the physical plant of the school.”

WCPSS has approximately 200 schools. Four are scheduled to open in the 2025-26 school year before others advance on WCPSS’s long-range facilities plan.

Blue, a previous N.C. House Speaker, still has a personal interest in such planning, even more than 25 years since his children attended and graduated from WCPSS campuses. “I want them to prepare my grandchildren to be successful,” he said.