The Durham County government has spent the last month practically begging the Durham Public Schools (DPS) Board of Education to lower its expectations for county funding.
Take DPS’s $11 million continuation request—the funding increase that administrators say would do nothing except maintain DPS services at their current level: “That’s already more than we have available revenue to support,” county budget director Keith Lane told a recent county commission and school board meeting, noting the county only has $8.7 million in new revenue to go around if commissioners don’t raise taxes.
On Thursday night, the school board nonetheless asked the county for that $11 million increase. And for another $15 million in an expansion request for new initiatives like raising classified staff pay. And for another $3 million for student laptop and classroom projector replacements.
In total, DPS is asking Durham County for a $28.5 million increase in its budget compared with last year, which would push the county’s share of DPS funding to $252 million, including capital outlay.
Who are the winners and losers of the DPS budget request?
Winners
- Inflation: Because most everything, including DPS, costs more.
- Charter schools: Which automatically get about 20 percent of any money that the county gives to DPS.
- DAE, at least right now: The union put the classified pay increase, which makes up the bulk of the expansion request, at the center of its meet and confer conversations with top administrators this year. But they’ll have a tougher time convincing the county commission.
- DPS CFO Jeremy Teetor: Whose coolheadedness has served him well in cleaning up a series of financial messes while serving as a key contributor to the meet and confer process. This year’s late-March budget request approval, while still behind schedule, puts the board a month ahead of last year’s vote.
- State legislators who want to shift the burden of education to local government: As the state lags on increases in teacher pay, districts like Durham are increasingly picking up the slack.
Losers
- Durham County commissioners: Who now will have to balance pressure from the DAE (who want funded as much as possible of the $28.5 million increase) and from angry residents (who don’t want their taxes to increase again).
- Local taxpayers: Because North Carolina ranks dead last in the country in public school funding.
- Public school students: Who seem unlikely to see all of their needs met, in this budget or any other in North Carolina.
The school board is well aware that their request puts the county commission in a pretty tough spot this spring.
“They are going to face some impossible choices,” longtime school board member Natalie Beyer said on Thursday. And county commissioner Wendy Jacobs had some harsh words for the request even before the school board made it official: “Obviously, [the request that] could be coming from Durham Public Schools—it’s not fundable,” Jacobs told the school board at a meeting this month. “And I know that there’s a lot of demands on you all that have come out of the meet and confer process, but we also have to be realistic. And as you can see it’s just literally not possible.”
That’s because, as Lane has pointed out, sales tax revenue has stalled, leaving the county commissioners to decide how much, if at all, to raise property taxes to support DPS.
DPS’s sizable requested increase is not a surprise, as the school board generally asks the county for more than it expects to receive. The bulk of this year’s expansion request would help move DPS minimum wage from $17.15 an hour to match the county’s current $19.22. That pay bump has been pushed by the district’s majority-member union, the Durham Association of Educators, throughout the district’s new meet and confer process.
With all that pressure from their workers, there’s really no reason for the school board not to request such a large increase, even in the face of all of the county’s warnings. And as school board member Jessica Carda-Auten noted at a county meeting earlier in the month, funding of public education is an early investment in the county’s people by a progressive government.
“You’re providing people with the skills and the abilities to go out in their community and get the jobs that they need to build a successful economy. You’re making them healthier citizens that will rely on healthcare services less. You’re making them less reliant on things like SNAP benefits and other social services. You’re going to eventually reduce your jail population because you have people who are now in the workforce,” Carda-Auten said.
But the county commissioners—with the power to tax and the duty to hear from the residents whose tax bills keep going up—live in a very different political reality from their school board counterparts. In recent years, the commission has dramatically increased its support of DPS by bringing in more property tax revenue, but has warned DPS that there is a limit.
“The ability to [support DPS] using natural growth and revenue has all but dissipated,” Lane said at a county commission meeting on Monday. “And we’re at the point of needing property tax rate increases every year potentially just to handle some things that we used to be able to in the past handle with natural growth.”
“The question,” Lane said. “The big question for everyone is, is that type of increase sustainable?”
If the county wants more money—say, with which to fund schools—each 1 cent per $100 of assessed value would raise about $8.8 million.
“So that’s how you find $20 million or $30 million,” said Lane at a recent meeting. But, because the county already needs to raise taxes to pay for construction bonds authorized by voters in 2022, there’s already a several cent increase “that we’re going to have to do over the next couple of years,” said Lane.
The DAE has already started to shift its focus to the county commission ahead of the county manager’s May 11 budget unveiling.
“[The school board] listened to what workers feel will make their jobs better for the students that they’re serving,” DAE president Mika Twietmeyer told INDY after the vote. “So I think this is definitely a win, and now we just have to work to have the county see that it’s critical for DPS that we get this funding.”
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