Some Wake Commissioners Want to Make the School Board Responsible for School Funding. It’s Not as Simple as It Sounds.

Ending the sometimes-acrimonious school-funding feud between the Wake County Board of Commissioners and the Board of Education could be as simple as empowering the school board to raise taxes, rather than forcing schools to rely on the county’s largesse every year.

Four current commissioners want the legislature to let them try. But as intuitive as it might sound—school board members are elected to oversee the school system, so why not make them determine school tax rates?—the effort faces an uncertain future.

Last week, commissioners included the taxing authority change on their 2019 wish list of legislative goals. However, the item was temporarily pulled from a work session agenda pending the adoption of the N.C. Association of County Commissioners’ goals for next year’s legislative session, according to assistant county manager Chris Dillon. The board will review the proposed change again in January—after at least two new commissioners are sworn in.

North Carolina is one of only three states where elected school boards depend on other local governments for funds, creating an uncomfortable dance between commissioners and school officials: The school system always needs more money. County officials want to tell voters they’re improving schools while also keeping taxes low.

In recent years, even with an all-Democratic Board of Commissioners avowedly committed to education funding, the resulting compromise hasn’t satisfied school advocates.

This year, Wake schools asked for $69 million in new funds but received just $45 million. In 2017–18, the school system requested $45 million and got $21 million.

Those fights led to successful campaigns to defeat Commissioners Erv Portman and John Burns in the Democratic primary in May. Barring upsets in November, former school board member Susan Evans and longtime schools advocate Vickie Adamson will assume their seats in December.

The proposed remedy for this recurring conflict: Let school systems raise their own taxes. The N.C. School Boards Association has been lobbying for this change since 2000.

“We haven’t had any great movement in that direction,” says Ed Dunlap, the NCSBA’s executive director. “I was extremely pleased to hear that the Wake County Board of Commissioners was interested in looking at that.”

Only, the incarnation of the Board of Commissioners that considers the idea in January might not be all that interested.

“I do not believe we will be taking that up in January,” board chairwoman Jessica Holmes told the INDY Monday. “I think I can speak confidently in that regard. It was a request by some individual commissioners to be considered. I was not one of them.”

This week, Burns, Matt Calabria, and Sig Hutchinson all said they’re open to the idea. Portman has previously told the INDY he is as well. For Hutchinson, it’s a way to hold school board members accountable. Calabria thinks it might add consistency to the budget process. Burns calls it “good government” that will correct a mismatch in responsibilities.

“They would have to face the same voters on the same issues that I do,” he says.

But with Burns and Portman out, Holmes—a staff attorney with the N.C. Association of Educators—will have a bloc of staunchly pro-education allies in Evans, Adamson, and Greg Ford, a former principal. If they don’t think the change is needed, it’s dead in the water. (Evans and Adamson did not return phone calls by press time.)

Other than Mecklenburg County, which briefly considered a similar move following the failure of former state representative Rick Glazier’s 2007 bill to shift taxing authority to school boards, no other counties have taken up this initiative, says NCSBA government relations director Leanne Winner.

Citing a 2001 study from South Carolina, she argues that granting that authority could actually lower taxes.

“Overall, in the communities where the school board had become independent, taxes went up less than in those communities where the school board remained dependent,” Winner says. “My theory is that the school board would go in and really scrub their budget and get rid of any programs that were not overly effective. That there was a real concerted effort in those communities, before they asked the taxpayers for more money, to make sure it’s as tight as it can be.”

Winner doesn’t envision the General Assembly granting all school boards taxing authority at once, but she thinks it could be feasible as a pilot program. And that’s where Wake could come in.

But, under the state constitution, launching even a pilot program would require not just legislative approval but also a referendum, says former legislative staffer and general counsel Gerry Cohen. The earliest such a measure could appear on the ballot would be March 2020.

A referendum would be a “heavy hurdle,” Cohen says. And he wouldn’t vote for it.

“It seems to me a complete abdication of any sort of fiscal responsibility,” Cohen says. “Should we let the health board levy taxes? Should we let the Board of Elections levy taxes?”

School board chairwoman Monika Johnson-Hostler says she hopes any effort to change how schools are funded would be a collaboration between the school board and commissioners. But that conversation, she adds, has yet to happen.