Name: Tyler Swanson
Age: 32
Party affiliation: Democrat
Campaign website: swansonforwake.com
Occupation & employer: Nonprofit Consultant
Years lived in the area: 7
1. What is your past or current involvement with Wake County Public Schools? What makes you qualified for this job?
“My involvement with Wake County Public Schools is both professional and deeply personal. I currently serve as an elected member of the Wake County Board of Education, where I have had the opportunity to take on significant leadership responsibilities throughout my first term. During my time on the Board, I have chaired the Student Achievement Committee and the Budget and Finance Committee, served as Vice Chair of the Board of Education, and currently serve as Chair of the Board.
Before serving on the Board, I was a high school teacher. That experience gave me firsthand insight into the challenges and opportunities facing students, educators, and families. It taught me the importance of creating learning environments where every student feels seen, valued, supported, and loved. I carry that perspective with me in every decision I make as a school board member.
I believe I am qualified for this position because I bring a combination of classroom experience, elected leadership, public administration, community organizing, and policy advocacy. My work on the Board has required me to navigate complex issues, manage competing priorities, collaborate with fellow Board members and district leadership, engage with families and community members, and make decisions focused on improving outcomes for students.
My leadership experience has also given me a comprehensive understanding of how a large public school system operates—from student achievement and school funding to community engagement and governance. Most importantly, I understand that strong public schools must remain centered on students and the educators who serve them. I bring to this position not only my professional experience, but also a deep commitment to public education and to ensuring that every student in Wake County has the opportunity to thrive.”
2. What are the three main issues that you believe the Wake County Public Schools Board of Education needs to address in the upcoming years?
“First, we must recruit and retain high-quality teachers and school staff. Our educators are the heart of our schools, and we cannot provide students with the education they deserve without a strong and supported workforce. We must continue working to improve compensation, working conditions, professional support, and opportunities for educators to grow. As a former high school teacher, I understand firsthand the challenges educators face, and as a Board member, I know how important it is for us to advocate for policies that make Wake County a place where educators want to work
Second, we must address the funding challenges facing our schools. Wake County is a growing and increasingly diverse school system, and our students deserve the resources necessary to succeed. Unfortunately, the General Assembly has not fully met its constitutional responsibility to provide a sound, basic education. At the same time, local resources are being asked to fill gaps that should not exist. As a Board, we must continue to advocate strongly for the state to fulfill its constitutional obligations while also being responsible stewards of the resources entrusted to us.
Third, we must protect public education from continued attacks at the federal level. We are seeing efforts that threaten public education, undermine educators, and could limit opportunities and protections for students and families. Wake County must be prepared to stand up for our public schools and ensure that every student has access to a high-quality education in an environment where they feel seen, valued, and supported.
These experiences have given me a broad understanding of the challenges facing our district and, equally important, the experience of working collaboratively with my colleagues to find solutions. No single Board member can meet the challenges I have listed here alone. It is important to work collaboratively with my fellow board members. I practice effective leadership by listening, building consensus, respecting different perspectives, and working together with the school board, always focused on our shared commitment to students. I look forward to continuing that work with my colleagues to advocate for our educators, fight for the funding our schools deserve, and protect the promise of public education for every student in Wake County.”
3. In your opinion, how should the school board approach its mandate to pass a balanced budget when costs (teacher and staff pay, building maintenance, materials, transportation, etc.) are rising every year and the state continues to underfund Wake’s public schools? For example: Which types of funding cuts are you most or least comfortable approving? How aggressively should the school board lobby Wake County for more funding?
“The Wake County Board of Education has a legal obligation to pass a balanced budget, and we take that responsibility seriously. But we also have to be honest about why balancing our budget has become increasingly difficult: the North Carolina General Assembly continues to underfund public education while diverting taxpayer dollars toward private school vouchers.
The rising costs of teacher and staff compensation, transportation, building maintenance, instructional materials, and other essential services are real. At the same time, Wake County continues to grow, meaning we are serving more students and facing greater demands on our schools. The state should be meeting its constitutional obligation to provide a sound, basic education—not asking local taxpayers to continually make up the difference.
I am incredibly grateful for our strong partnership with the Wake County Board of Commissioners. Their investment in Wake County Public Schools has helped sustain programs, support educators, and protect opportunities for students at a time when the state has failed to provide the resources our schools need. I believe the Board of Education should continue to advocate aggressively with our County Commissioners for additional funding when necessary. But we must be clear: Wake County should not have to continually compensate for the failures of the NCGA.
The General Assembly has made a choice to prioritize the expansion of private school vouchers while traditional public schools face significant funding challenges. The proposed constitutional amendment that could further undermine public education is another example of policies that threaten the stability and future of our public schools. At the same time, decisions such as the Blue Ridge Road loop create additional financial and infrastructure pressures for Wake County and communities across North Carolina.
And we need to confront a painful contradiction in North Carolina’s priorities: Being “”first in business”” means very little when we are last in funding the public schools that educate the workforce businesses depend on. That is not a flex. That is a failure—and our children are paying the price.
When cuts are unavoidable, I believe we must protect the classroom first. I am least comfortable cutting teachers, instructional support, student services, transportation, and programs that directly affect student achievement and student well-being. We should first look for efficiencies, administrative savings, delayed or nonessential expenditures, and other ways to reduce costs without directly harming students.
But we also need to recognize the reality: local school boards cannot budget their way out of a state-created funding crisis. When the NCGA fails to adequately fund public education, Wake County is forced to make difficult cuts simply to meet its legal obligation to balance the budget. Those cuts are not a reflection of a lack of commitment from our local Board of Education or County Commissioners—they are the consequence of inadequate state funding.
As someone who has chaired the Student Achievement Committee and Budget and Finance Committee, served as Vice Chair of the Board, and now serves as Chair, I understand the responsibility that comes with making these difficult decisions. I also know that the best solutions come from working collaboratively with my colleagues, County Commissioners, educators, families, and our broader community.
We should continue to be responsible stewards of every dollar we receive, but we must also be relentless advocates for the funding our students deserve. The NCGA needs to do better. North Carolina cannot claim to be a national leader in business while refusing to make the investment necessary to educate the next generation. Our public schools are not an expense to be minimized—they are the foundation of our state’s future.”
4. North Carolina recently passed a law barring teachers from instructing their students on “divisive concepts” related to racism, sexism, and inequality. The Trump administration says it has cut billions of dollars in spending for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives nationwide. WCPSS still has an equity policy in place, but has eliminated its Office of Equity Affairs to come into compliance with the new state law. How do you think these changes will affect the WCPSS community? What should the school board be doing to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion districtwide?
These changes create real challenges for Wake County public schools and for educators who are trying to navigate new state restrictions while continuing to serve an increasingly diverse student population. Local school boards across North Carolina are being forced to operate in a hostile state and federal policy environment that makes the work of educating and supporting students more challenging every day. I believe we must be clear about what is at stake. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are not simply the names of an office, a program, or a policy. They are principles woven into the fabric of our nation and into our responsibility as public educators. Every child deserves to feel welcomed, respected, and valued in their school, and every student should have an equal opportunity to thrive regardless of their background or circumstances.
The elimination of WCPSS’s Office of Equity Affairs does not eliminate the inequities that students and families may experience. Changing the name of an office or program does not change our responsibility to address disparities, protect students from discrimination and bullying, and ensure that every child has access to the resources and opportunities they need to succeed. As a Board, our responsibility is to comply with state law while refusing to abandon the underlying values of equity and opportunity. We must provide educators with clear guidance about what the law requires, continue teaching accurate and complete history within the state-approved curriculum, address bullying and discrimination, examine disparities in student outcomes, and ensure our policies and practices give every student a meaningful opportunity to succeed. We must continue to listen to students, families, educators, and community members.
As a school board member, I will continue advocating for schools where every student can see themselves reflected, learn an honest and complete history, and feel safe, respected, and supported. We must follow the law, but we should also use every lawful avenue available to advance opportunity, belonging, and educational excellence for all students.
5. WCPSS, like other North Carolina school districts, is losing students (and dollars) to charter and private schools. Do you support North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship voucher program for private schools? What should WCPSS do to retain more students and families, and how should the district manage the funding loss from students moving to charters?
“No, I do not support diverting public dollars from public schools to private schools through the Opportunity Scholarship voucher program. As a member of the Public School Board, why would I support taking resources away from the very schools I was elected to serve? It is especially inappropriate when the state is not fully funding public education and fulfilling its constitutional duties. WCPSS already offers families plenty of choices, including magnet, traditional, and early college programs. We must put funding our public schools first as our state constitution requires. Further, while we hold public schools to a large number of mandates as discussed above, we do not hold private schools that use tax dollars accountable to the public – not in terms of how the money is spent or in terms of student academic outcomes.”
6. Wake County voters will have the option to support a $680 million school bond for new school construction and facility repairs. Do you support the bond? Why or why not?
I support addressing the needs outlined in our Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), including the need for new schools and critical facility repairs. School boards do not collect revenue nor set the County budget. We rely on the Commissioners to determine how to raise the capital we need to build or maintain schools. Further, as a sitting elected Board member, I am legally prohibited from telling voters how to vote on the bond. What I can do—and what I believe is my responsibility—is provide voters with the facts about our growth, our facility needs, and what is outlined in the CIP so they can make an informed decision for themselves.
7. Last school year, a state investigation found that WCPSS failed to reliably transport two students with disabilities to and from school in violation of their legally-binding Individual Education Plans. WCPSS paid over $2 million in settlements to special education families since the start of 2025. And this spring, the school board unanimously rejected the superintendent’s proposal to cut $18 million in special education funding to plug a budget hole—but did not meaningfully increase the budget for special education, as the local chapter of the North Carolina Association of Educators implored them to do. What should WCPSS be doing to better support students with disabilities and their teachers?
As a former special education teacher, I know firsthand how challenging this work can be. Teachers and staff want to provide the best possible support for students, but they cannot do it without the resources, staffing, and support they need. We also have to be honest about the bigger issue: North Carolina’s current federal and state funding model for special education is not working. The state must do more to fund the actual needs of students with disabilities and ensure districts have the resources necessary to meet their legal obligations. WCPSS must continue strengthening transportation, staffing and related training, and accountability for students with disabilities. While we were able to avoid the cuts this year, we could not increase the overall budget; this would have required an additional allocation from the commissioners who were already facing budget challenges for other county services. We cannot continue asking local districts to solve a funding problem created at the state and federal levels. Our elected representatives who control funding must do better. Our students are not getting the resources they need , and our special education teachers deserve better support to do their jobs well.
8, How should WCPSS address the ongoing challenge of school bus driver turnover as drivers leave the school system for better-paying positions in the private sector?
“WCPSS has taken meaningful steps at the local level to recruit and retain our bus drivers. We have increased driver salaries, and I led the initiative on the Board to ensure our drivers are paid twice a month, consistent with other districts across North Carolina. We have also conducted a compensation study that clearly identifies the gaps between what our employees earn and what the market demands.
We need to continue acting on that data and making compensation competitive. But local districts can only do so much. The North Carolina General Assembly should be fully funding public education and investing in the people who keep our schools running, rather than diverting resources away from public schools.
North Carolina should be implementing the Leandro plan—not cutting it or ignoring the state’s constitutional duty to provide every child with a sound, basic education. If the state fulfilled its constitutional responsibility, local districts would have the resources to better recruit and retain the educators and staff our students depend on.”
9. How should WCPSS respond to efforts to ban books in schools?
WCPSS already has policies and procedures in place to address concerns about instructional and library materials. Those policies provide families with a process to raise concerns, and when appropriate, families can be offered alternative learning assignments. The challenge now is that the North Carolina General Assembly has changed the rules. The 2026 budget legislation created new requirements for how local school boards handle challenges to instructional and library materials, including community media advisory committees and specific timelines for reviewing challenges. As a Board member, my responsibility is to make sure WCPSS updates its policies to comply with state law while continuing to respect parents, educators, students, and the educational process.
10. Recently, Durham Public Schools implemented a Universal Free Lunch program that provides nutritious free breakfasts and lunches to all of the system’s students. The Wake County school board, on the other hand, voted to charge more for meals this academic year (while also agreeing to form a task force to explore lowering prices and feeding more students) Was this the right move? Should WCPSS follow DPS’s lead and find a way to provide free meals to the district’s students? What strategies can the district employ to bring meal prices down?
“I believe every student should have access to a nutritious breakfast and lunch at school, regardless of their family’s ability to pay. However, we also have to recognize that Wake County and Durham County are different school systems with different student populations and different poverty levels. We should learn from Durham Public Schools’ experience, but we should not assume that the same approach can simply be transferred to Wake County without considering the financial realities of our district and our Child Nutrition Services program.
Wake County’s Child Nutrition Services operates as an enterprise business, which means we cannot allow the program to operate with a negative balance. The increases in food costs, employee salaries and benefits, transportation, and other operational expenses have created significant financial pressures. These rising costs are the primary reasons we have had to increase meal prices. These decisions are never easy, but we have a responsibility to maintain a financially sustainable program while continuing to provide nutritious meals to our students.
We have been able to expand our Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) schools because of our strong partnership with the Wake County Board of Commissioners. Their investment has helped us provide meals to more students and reduce financial barriers for families. I believe we should continue strengthening that partnership and looking for additional opportunities to expand access.
Universal school meals are also part of our legislative agenda, and we have advocated—and will continue to advocate—for universal breakfast and lunch for all students. Access to nutritious meals is directly connected to educational success. A hungry child cannot be expected to fully focus, learn, participate, and reach their potential in the classroom. If we are serious about improving student achievement, then making sure students have access to nutritious food must be part of that conversation.
At the same time, we have to acknowledge the broader consequences of the failures of both the North Carolina General Assembly and the federal government. When state and federal leaders fail to adequately invest in public education and the programs that support students and families, the burden does not disappear—it gets pushed down to local school boards and local taxpayers. Local boards are then left to make increasingly difficult decisions with limited resources while costs continue to rise.
The NCGA has the resources and the responsibility to make universal school breakfast and lunch a statewide priority. When the state has a surplus, we should be asking why more of those resources cannot be invested in ensuring that every student has access to nutritious meals. Instead, local school systems are being forced to navigate inadequate funding while trying to meet the needs of growing and increasingly diverse student populations.
In the meantime, WCPSS should continue looking for ways to bring costs down by expanding CEP eligibility, increasing participation, reducing food waste, strengthening purchasing partnerships, reviewing contracts and supply costs, and identifying efficiencies within Child Nutrition Services. We should also continue working with our County Commissioners to identify opportunities for additional local investment.
Ultimately, I support the goal of universal school meals, but achieving it in a financially sustainable way cannot rest solely on local school boards and county taxpayers. The failures of state and federal leadership have real consequences for local education leaders, who are left trying to solve problems without the resources necessary to fully address them.
Wake County has shown what is possible when local government partners with our school system to invest in students. We will continue doing everything we can locally, but the state and federal governments must do their part. If we want our students to succeed academically, we must make sure they have the basic resources to succeed—including a nutritious meal when they walk into the classroom.”
11. In 2023, the district set a goal for 90% of its students to meet or exceed grade-level proficiency in 2028, with no disparities based on race, ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status. Recent data show that two-thirds to three-quarters of WCPSS students are testing proficiently on their end-of-grade exams, an increase from 64.4% of students who, at the end of 2025, were meeting or exceeding proficiency. What factors do you believe are contributing to this progress, and what should the district continue to do to boost proficiency across the board and eliminate disparities?
“I am incredibly proud and grateful for their work. WCPSS has seen proficiency increase from 64.4% in 2025 to 68.2% in 2026, the district’s highest proficiency rate since 2012. But we should not confuse progress with being finished. Our goal is 90% proficiency by 2028 while eliminating disparities based on race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status.We need to continue investing in our teachers, using data to identify where students need additional support, strengthening early literacy and math instruction, and making sure every school has the resources to meet the needs of its students. And I have to ask: imagine what our educators could accomplish if we had a General Assembly that fully invested in public schools instead of constantly asking our local communities to do more with less.”
12. Should WCPSS adopt a formal meet-and-confer policy with the Wake County Association of Educators as Durham Public Schools has done? Why or why not? How should the school board work with the group?
“I most definitely believe the ban on collective bargaining for public employees should be overturned by the NCGA. Educators and public employees deserve a meaningful voice in the decisions that affect their working conditions and their ability to serve students. In the meantime, I am open to “Meet and Confer” policies and have been in conversations with districts that have implemented them to better understand what works and what challenges they are facing with this policy. I have also been transparent with district leadership about the need to reimagine our current structures, including the Superintendent’s Advisory Council and Board advisory committees, to ensure educators and community members have a meaningful voice. Since joining the Board, I have met regularly with NCAE leadership, including maintaining a standing weekly meeting with Wake NCAE leadership to bring their concerns directly to WCPSS leadership. I remain a dues-paying NCAE member because I believe educators should have a strong voice in public education. Whether through collective bargaining, Meet and Confer, or stronger local advisory structures, my goal is the same: ensuring educators have a seat at the table and that their voices are heard.”
13. If there is anything else you would like to address, please do so here.
