Name: Brian Olson

Age: 53

Party affiliation: Democrat

Campaign website: olsonforwakecountykids.com

Occupation & employer: Operations Management & Small Business Owner (25+ years in telecommunications, project management, and small business operations; U.S. Army Veteran, E-5 Sergeant)

Years lived in the area: 6

1. What is your past or current involvement with Wake County Public Schools? What makes you qualified for this job?

“I am an active, everyday parent with children currently enrolled in our district—navigating our local schools from Dillard Elementary Magnet School and Cary Elementary School to West Cary Middle School and Cary High School. As an IEP dad, I know firsthand what it takes to navigate special education and advocate for student needs on a daily basis. I am deeply rooted in our community as Vice President of the West Cary Middle School PTA and a board member of the Fine Arts Booster club.
What makes me uniquely qualified is a simple reality: I am the only candidate in this race with children currently in our public schools, and I bring the most extensive school board governance experience to the table. Professionally, I am an operations consultant and small business owner with over 25 years of experience meeting payroll, managing P&Ls, and solving complex problems, alongside my service as a U.S. Army veteran (E-5 Sergeant, 110th Military Intelligence Battalion, 10th Mountain Division) with a Top Secret / SCI clearance. Politically, I am a twice-elected school board leader who served three total years as board chair across different districts—stepping up on day one to steer districts through fiscal turnarounds, capital bond management, and executive leadership transitions. I have the hands-on skin in the game and the operational discipline to get results from day one.”

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?

“1. Classroom-First Fiscal Accountability: Administrative bloat and reactive band-aid budgeting siphon critical dollars away from learning. We need a rigorous expenditure audit to ensure taxpayer and bond dollars bypass bureaucracy and go straight to teacher support and direct student resources. Earn public support for the upcoming bond measure so long as we ensure fiscal accountability.

2. Operational Growth & Facilities Management: Rapid growth in suburban corridors like West Cary and Morrisville places immense strain on physical infrastructure. We must treat school facilities like critical public infrastructure, prioritizing smart capital improvement planning and proactive maintenance.

3. Institutional Stability & Parental Partnership: The board has wasted far too much energy dodging nationalized culture wars and outside legal posturing. We must refocus entirely on academic excellence, safe and orderly classrooms, and respecting parents as true partners.”

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? 

“As the old saying goes, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. That is the reality of school district budgeting. Too much of our district’s financial planning is reactive band-aid management—playing fiscal whack-a-mole year after year, just hoping reality doesn’t hit too hard. In business, there’s a basic truth: if it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense.

When the inevitable hits and we have to balance a budget under pressure, my line in the sand is simple: you protect the classroom. I am least comfortable cutting anything that touches direct student support, exceptional children’s services, or teacher classroom backing. Where do we look first? Right at central office administrative bloat, top-heavy bureaucracy, and non-essential consulting contracts that don’t add a single ounce of value to a teacher’s day. We trim the fat at the top so the schools don’t bleed at the bottom.

Furthermore, we have got to stop quietly accepting unfunded mandates from the state. It is entirely hypocritical for Raleigh to dump new legal requirements on local districts, underfund public education, and then say, “”Good luck balancing your budget.”” If it’s not okay for the federal government to run that game on the states, it’s not okay for the state to run it on Wake County. We don’t just sit back and take it—we take that fight straight to the steps of the Capitol and demand full funding for what they mandate. And locally, we stop treating County Commissioners like adversaries; we approach them as true fiscal partners, walking in with transparent data and a bulletproof audit proving every dollar requested goes directly to kids, buses, and classrooms—not bureaucracy.”

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?

“Seriously—when are we going to stop playing political football and remember who these schools are actually for? Our kids.

If we want to be inclusive in an equitable way, the adults in the room need to start modeling the exact behavior we wish to see in our children. As the old saying goes: “Careful the things you say, children will listen. Careful the things you do, children will see and learn.” Right now, the adults in downtown offices and state capitals are losing the plot by turning education into a proxy war, and kids are watching how we handle our disagreements.

Let’s be crystal clear: complying with state law or eliminating a top-heavy, bureaucratic central office downtown does not mean abandoning equity, inclusion, or fairness. That office was burning millions of taxpayer dollars on administrative overhead and middle-management layers that didn’t help a single child read or write. Trimming that fat is just good business sense to keep money where it belongs: in the classroom.

At the same time, true inclusion doesn’t require a political department—it requires everyday execution. As an IEP dad, I know that every single child who walks through our doors deserves to be respected, kept safe, and given the exact resources and academic support they need to succeed, regardless of their zip code or background. A school board’s job isn’t to run a social engineering factory or chase nationalized headlines. It’s to manage the budget like a professional, follow the law, and keep the focus locked 100% on working together so our kids can thrive.”

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?

“Driving around Wake County, you sometimes feel like you literally can’t see the communities through the dense walls of pine trees—and when it comes to the debate over school choice and vouchers, we’ve managed to completely miss the forest for the trees, too.

While the adults are out here fighting in the woods over a zero-sum funding game, arguing over bureaucracy, and sweating over archaic head-count formulas, we’ve completely lost the plot. The irony is, if we’re the ones who are lost, maybe we ought to hand the compass to the kids in our STEM classes. They’d probably figure out the route home a lot faster than the grown-ups. After all, the children are our future—and it’s time they guide our focus right back to where it belongs: the classroom.

The real debate isn’t about pitting public options against private ones; it’s about a deeper, systemic problem. Our entire public school funding model is built on an archaic per-pupil head-count formula. Districts panic over enrollment shifts not just because they care about the kids—though teachers certainly do—but because our funding mechanism is tied directly to attendance days, threatening to pull the rug out from under already underfunded schools.

The reality check is this: even with 100% attendance, North Carolina’s per-pupil funding is woefully inadequate. The system is broken from the top down.
I strongly support parents’ choice to choose public schools, just as I respect a parent’s right to direct their children’s education and find the environment that fits them best. But the solution isn’t a zero-sum game that starves classrooms. The solution is modernizing how we fund public education—ensuring our schools have the stable, baseline resources they need to thrive regardless of shifting head counts, while putting an end to the state’s chronic underfunding and unfunded mandates.

When you fully fund public education the right way, and when schools focus relentlessly on classroom excellence and operational discipline, you don’t have to panic about the numbers. You just focus on doing the job right for the kids.”

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?

Hell yes, I support the $680 million school bond. Let’s not dance around it.

If you want a straight answer: yes, absolutely. In fact, for anyone out there mobilizing against this bond, I challenge them to go spend a day standing under a leaking roof or sitting in a sweltering classroom with a failing HVAC unit. Let them experience the physical reality our kids and teachers face every single day in these aging buildings, rather than treating basic infrastructure like a political punching bag. This isn’t about throwing good money after bad or writing a blank check for administrative bloat; it’s about basic, necessary survival for our schools.

I get why independent and middle-of-the-road voters get nervous when they hear “bond measure”—they’re sick of hearing about tax increases, misspent money, and a system that always seems to be bleeding cash. Taxpayers and homeowners have every right to demand strict accountability. This better not be another temporary bandage or a superficial quick-fix for a system caught flat-footed by bad long-term planning.

My support for this bond comes with a non-negotiable mandate: absolute fiduciary responsibility. This money can’t disappear into consultant studies or central office overhead. It needs to be tied directly to the mission-critical needs of our schools—upgrading facilities, fixing structural failures, and getting resources down to where it actually counts. 

As a dad, I look at it through a very simple lens. If Timmy walks into a classroom that’s crumbling or neglected, all the educational theories in the world aren’t going to help him learn. We have to give our teachers and our kids the physical foundation they deserve to succeed. When you manage taxpayer dollars with discipline, transparency, and a laser-like focus on the kids, you earn the public’s trust. Let’s pass the bond, hold ourselves accountable, and get the job done right for the kids.

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 an IEP dad who has lived the daily reality of navigating the special education system, I don’t need a study or a questionnaire to tell me where the cracks are—I’ve lived them. If you’ve ever had to fight tooth and nail just to get a school district to provide the basic, legally mandated support your child needs to learn, you know the absolute exhaustion of it. You become your child’s primary cheerleader, defense attorney, and case manager all rolled into one.

When vulnerable students, specialized services, and IEP mandates get treated like flexible line items or collateral damage in a budget shortfall, the system has completely lost its way.

Let’s call it what it is. Too often, when central leadership goes looking to balance a spreadsheet, they look for the programs serving the kids they figure will make the least amount of noise. They target special education and specialized transit first, assuming they can quietly pull the rug out from under families who are already exhausted from fighting for their kids. That isn’t just poor management; it’s a profound failure of our core moral obligation.

We need to ensure that special education, specialized transit, and mandated student services are fully protected, stably funded, and treated as non-negotiable core operations from the top down. Every child in Wake County deserves an environment where they can succeed, and no parent should ever have to wonder if their school district is treating their child’s rights as optional.

As someone who has been in the trenches fighting for a child’s needs, I’m going to make sure our fiscal priorities are straight, our accountability is ironclad, and our focus stays locked squarely where it belongs: on doing right by every single student.”

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? 

Solving the school bus driver shortage isn’t just about throwing another temporary bonus at the problem and hoping people stay. It comes down to a fundamental reality: we have to make WCPSS a place where people actually want to work, and stop taking our frontline staff for granted. 

Sure, pay matters—if you’re competing against every commercial transit and delivery job in a booming market like Wake County, you have to be competitive. But money by itself is only part of the puzzle. The real breakdown is work culture and structural. Driving a school bus is a uniquely challenging, split-shift gig—trying to find part-time talent for a fractured schedule is a lot like trying to staff a production line that only runs two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. 

If we want to fix this, we have to look at the whole 360-degree picture. We need to get creative with recruitment and retention by aligning schedules with real-life needs—whether that means tailoring routes for parents, local professionals looking for flexible side work, or streamlining the path to getting credentials without red tape. More importantly, we have to clean up the operational chaos. When drivers are treated like an afterthought, handed impossible routes, or left to absorb the stress of a mismanaged system, they walk.

We need to respect our drivers as the vital professionals they are—because they are literally the first school employee a child sees in the morning and the last one who ensures they get home safe. When you build a culture of mutual respect, fix the operational headaches, and treat staff like human beings instead of spreadsheet rows, you stop struggling to fill seats and start building a workforce that wants to stay.

9. How should WCPSS respond to efforts to ban books in schools?

“No good has ever come from a society that tries to ban books, and WCPSS should push back against these censorship efforts with absolute clarity.

Let’s call this what it is: a manufactured political sideshow. When organized outside pressure groups try to pull books off our shelves, they’re usually tilting at windmills over titles they haven’t even bothered to read, using children’s education as a prop for a culture war. As the only candidate in this race who wore the uniform in defense of our Constitution and our foundational freedoms, I didn’t serve to watch us start playing the role of domestic censors. If we’re going to talk about defending liberty and the First Amendment, let’s actually mean it. History has a funny way of reminding us where censorship ends: yesterday’s banned books turn into tomorrow’s bonfires—whether it’s political dissent, historical texts, or even religious material that someone in power decides is inconvenient.

We already have professional educators, media coordinators, and a structured, transparent review process for parents who have genuine concerns. We don’t need a shadow committee of political censors dictating what every child is allowed to read.
Parents have every right—and the sole responsibility—to guide what their own children read. What you don’t have the right to do is dictate what every other family’s child can read.

Instead of folding to outrage mobs or wasting district time and taxpayer money entertaining politically motivated bans, the school board and administration need to stand their ground, trust our trained professionals, and keep the focus where it belongs. Monitor what your kids check out, talk to your family, and let other parents do the same. Let’s spend less time playing petty censor and more time making sure our classrooms actually have the resources they need.”

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?

If we are serious about student success, we have to start with a basic reality: a child cannot learn on an empty stomach.

Universal school meal programs—like the approach taken in Durham Public Schools using federal mechanisms like the Community Eligibility Provision—do more than just feed kids; they eliminate bureaucratic paperwork hurdles and remove the social stigma that forces struggling families into the shadows. When food is treated as a core part of the school day, just like textbooks or lab equipment, it takes a massive layer of daily anxiety off of growing kids and busy parents. 

Now, let’s be entirely pragmatic about scale and execution in a massive district like Wake County. Doing this right isn’t about writing a blank check or ignoring logistical hurdles like food waste; it’s about smart federal leveraging, tight management, and refusing to settle for processed mystery meat that kids won’t touch anyway. We should be aiming for quality, nutrition, and common-sense food systems that actually nourish students.

Balancing big goals with strict fiscal responsibility means recognizing that feeding kids isn’t a luxury program or an afterthought—it’s a baseline operational priority. If we want our students to focus, learn, and succeed, we have to make sure they have the fuel to do it.

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?

“Let’s be honest about what we are seeing in these latest numbers: a lot of this rebound is the natural, hard-fought recovery of students and teachers pulling themselves out of the deep hole left by the disruptions of the pandemic years. We are finally getting back to—and in some areas exceeding—pre-pandemic baselines, and that is a testament to the sheer resilience of our kids and the daily heroics of our teachers in the classroom.
What drove this progress isn’t some brilliant new top-down initiative cooked up by central office consultants; it’s the boots-on-the-ground work of educators getting back to stable, uninterrupted teaching, and families trying to regain a sense of normal routine.

So, how do we build on it instead of just patting ourselves on the back?

Imagine a world where our ambitious policy goals actually came with real backing. We can’t talk about expanding student potential while schools are scrambling with facility needs and HVAC failures. But money alone isn’t the whole answer. To truly boost proficiency long-term, we have to trust the professionals in the classroom to deliver content in a way that makes sense to them and their students.

If we give teachers the tools they need to be successful, get out of their way, and then simply inspect what we expect, we might actually see what this district is truly capable of. Progress is good, but complacency is a killer. Let’s focus less on corporate education buzzwords and more on backing the people doing the actual work on the front lines every single day.”

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?

“Should WCPSS adopt a formal meet and confer policy with the Wake County Association of Educators? ABSOLUTELY!!

Let’s cut through the political theater and look at how the real world works. Coming from a background where working with employee associations and public sector representation is standard operating procedure, the resistance to formal dialogue here in North Carolina feels backward. Whether some folks in power like it or not, organizations like NCAE are already representing the workforce—they are the voice of the people actually in the buildings every single day.

Pretending they don’t exist or refusing to sit at the table doesn’t make staffing shortages, low morale, or retention crises go away; it just ensures that everyone operates in an adversarial loop instead of a collaborative one.

A formal meet and confer policy isn’t about surrendering board authority—it’s about basic professional respect. When you have teachers, bus drivers, and support staff who are carrying the weight of this district on their backs, the bare minimum leadership can do is sit down with them structured, in good faith, and listen to what they need to do their jobs.

We talk constantly about recruitment and retention, yet we lock out the very structures that give workers a legitimate voice in their working conditions. If we want a stable, high-functioning school district, we have to stop treating frontline employees like adversaries to be managed and start treating them like the professional partners they are. Let’s establish the policy, sit down at the table, and get to work.”

13. If there is anything else you would like to address, please do so here. 

“For too long, Wake County Public Schools has been run by a culture of comfortable complacency—where central office bureaucracy gets a cushion, administrative bloat gets protected, and frontline educators, bus drivers, and special education families get left to scramble with whack-a-mole band-aid budgets.

If you are generally dissatisfied with how the system has been run up to this point, it begs a very simple question: why keep handing the wheel back to the people who built the roadblocks? Holding a position of power, access, and a bully pulpit for years while things slide backward isn’t a qualification for more time—it’s a track record of speeding right past the real problems in our classrooms instead of slowing down to fix them.
If a school board can’t manage basic infrastructure like functional heating and cooling, or if it treats our most vulnerable special ed students as flexible line items, then leadership has completely lost its way. As Kipling noted, keeping your head when everyone else is losing theirs means refusing to accept the status quo of managed decline.

I’m running for the Wake County Board of Education to bring practical, no-nonsense sanity back to our district. As an IEP dad who has lived the daily reality of navigating these systems, I know what it means to fight for a child when the bureaucracy doesn’t want to listen. I don’t care about corporate education buzzwords or going along to get along.

If you can’t get the heat out of the classroom, get out of the boardroom. It’s time to stop making excuses, back the people doing the actual work on the front lines, and inspect what we expect. Let’s do the job right.”