Natalie Christley, a lifelong resident of North Carolina, originally intended to send her two children to traditional public school. Herbert Akins Road Elementary School, near her home in Holly Springs, had small classes and above-average test scores—exactly what she was looking for.
Then, a few years before Christley’s son was due to start kindergarten, the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) reassigned her children away from their base schools. So Christley started looking at her options.
As she toured public and charter schools around the area, “we were definitely looking at the quality of the education,” Christley said. “I was [also] looking at schools that have a lot of diversity, [at] their rankings on all the different websites, how they did their testing.”
This kind of “school shopping” is commonplace among parents nowadays, Apex Elementary School Principal Kristin Small told the INDY. Charters, like traditional public schools, are free, creating an alternative for families who can’t afford (or don’t want) to send their children to private schools.
Unlike traditional public schools, however, charters don’t have to follow state learning standards, or other state rules around school calendar or class size. They have a lot more flexibility, and are typically founded on a “charter” that outlines a specific mission.
To the dismay of public education advocates, they’re also not required to meet the same standards when it comes to providing school transportation or lunches—which creates barriers for low-income students, advocates argue.
Charters can’t legally reject students on the basis of race, income, English proficiency, disability, or special needs status. But, persistently, they have lower percentages of minority and low-income students compared to public schools, according to a 2025 report from nonprofit Public Schools First NC. They also have lower percentages of students with special needs and disabilities and those who speak English as a second language.
As charters rise in popularity, tension is growing between proponents of traditional public education (including local school board officials and groups like the North Carolina Association of Educators) and the families of some 18,000 students in Wake who say charter schools meet their needs. Because with every new charter that opens, there’s less money for traditional public schools.
An Ongoing Budget Crisis
WCPSS expects to lose around $81 million to charters this year, as students increasingly move away from public schools.
It’s money that could have paid for full-time literacy coaches, school nurses, and more, WCPSS board member Lynn Edmonds told the INDY. In an early draft of the budget, 130 special education teacher positions were on the chopping block. And while the school board was able to postpone those cuts, they still had to reject an ask for special education support services, Edmonds said.
“Our job is to provide students and educators with what they need to be successful,” she told the INDY. “They are really hurting, and we were not able to meet that need, and that is agonizing. It keeps you up at night.”
State laws allowing public school dollars to be diverted to charter and private schools are a big reason for WCPSS’ current budget crisis. Year over year, the state’s chronic underfunding of public education has forced the school board to make budget cuts, Edmonds said.
The amount of money Wake County expects to lose to charters this year is about seven times as much as it was in 2011. That’s because in 2011, the North Carolina General Assembly removed its cap on the number of charters allowed statewide, allowing many more to open.
Since then, the number of charters in Wake County has more than doubled, growing from 13 to 27. The growth of charters has been particularly rapid in western Wake County compared to other suburbs of Raleigh. Since 2011, six new charters have opened across Cary, Apex, and Holly Springs, compared to five in Raleigh—despite having about two-thirds of its population—and two in Wake Forest.
Since 2011, six new charters have opened across Cary, Apex, and Holly Springs, compared to five in Raleigh—despite the area having about two-thirds of Raleigh’s population—and two in Wake Forest.
In April, the Triangle Business Journal reported that the Triangle Math and Science Academy (TMSA), a charter school network with schools across North Carolina, would open a new campus in Cary, near the Starline at South Hills development off Buck Jones Road.
(TMSA already has three schools in Cary and Apex and is planning to build another school in Durham in 2026. The new Cary campus will serve about 900 elementary and middle school students, according to a press release, and is likely to pull students from across the Triangle.)
“When enrollment in charters goes up, that does have a fiscal impact on public schools and classrooms. It’s death by a thousand paper cuts. A year-after-year [increase] has an impact on the entire system.”
Christina Cole, Wake County president of the ncae
Likewise, the percentage of students enrolled in charters has gone up, while the percentage of students enrolled in traditional public schools has gone down.
When a student living in the WCPSS district chooses a charter school, they take a certain amount of money in per-pupil funding with them from both the state and the county. At the state level, charter schools in Wake County received around $169 million for the 2025–26 school year, according to a budget report—an average of $7,300 per pupil.
“When enrollment in charters goes up, that does have a fiscal impact on public schools and classrooms,” said Christina Cole, Wake County president of the North Carolina Association of Educators. “It’s death by a thousand paper cuts. A year-after-year [increase] has an impact on the entire system.”
Why Charters?
The flexibility of charter schools was one of the factors that appealed to Christley, who ended up enrolling her son in Apex’s Peak Charter Academy. Some charters focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) or embrace educational philosophies like Montessori, which involves hands-on learning. Others offer dual-language immersion or a larger selection of advanced or college prep classes.
Peak Charter, which opened in 2017 and serves elementary and middle school students, was ranked highly online and had the challenging academics Christley was looking for, she said. She felt like the charter’s differentiated learning program would be more beneficial for her son than WCPSS’ academically or intellectually gifted program, she added.
“My son is neurodivergent and gifted, and so it was important to me that he was going to a school that was going to challenge him educationally,” Christley said. “This was his first year in differentiated learning, and it’s been great for him. This is the first year he doesn’t complain all the time that school is boring, because he’s actually being challenged.”
Education for Profit
Many public education advocates also worry about state and local funding being turned over to for-profit companies, through a specific model that is growing across North Carolina and allows charter schools to be managed by for-profit “education management organizations.”
The charter school movement “started out with teachers who just wanted more flexibility in smaller environments,” said Heather Koons, director of Research and Communications for Public Schools First NC. “But once the for-profit sector realized that there could be money made in education, they started figuring out their model, and now they’re really coming into North Carolina.”
As of early 2021, for-profit organizations ran 18% of the charter schools in North Carolina, according to a report from the Network for Public Education. That includes at least eight of the 27 charters in Wake County: two in Raleigh and the rest scattered across the county.
Peak Charter, for example, is operated by National Heritage Academies, a company that runs more than 90 charter schools across nine states, according to the Network for Public Education report. The company regularly uses “sweeps contracts,” which “give for-profits the authority to run all school services in exchange for all or nearly all of the school’s revenue,” the report stated.
In other words, a charter can use public education dollars to pay a for-profit company for educational services like teachers, curriculum materials, administrative support, and testing.
“Whatever money is left over after the bills are paid can accumulate as profit,” the Network for Public Education report stated.
These kinds of charter schools are “especially problematic, because their goal is not educating North Carolina’s children,” Christine Kushner, a former member of the Wake school board, told the INDY. “Their primary goal is to make money.”
Christley, however, had nothing but good things to say about Peak Charter. She’s been impressed by the student performance, she added; according to the school’s 2025 report card, students there performed above the WCPSS average when it came to math, science, and reading.
School Choice
In addition to enabling the rapid expansion of charter schools, the General Assembly has made drastic cuts to accountability and oversight measures over the past 15 years. That’s led to a large number of charters that can vary wildly in quality.
“While some charter schools consistently demonstrate strong academic outcomes and exceed state standards, others face challenges related to student achievement, teacher retention, and resource allocation,” stated the State Board of Education’s 2023 Annual Charter Schools Report.
At the end of the 2024–25 school year, about one-third of the charter schools across the state were identified as “continually low performing” by the State Board of Education, according to the Public Schools First NC report. That includes 13 charters that received state letter grades of D or F for six years in a row.
By allowing so many private and charter schools to operate with public funding, the General Assembly is undermining traditional public school districts, said Kushner.
“It’s creating this false narrative that public schools are somehow inferior, but they’re not,” she said, adding that public schools have become much more innovative with college and career prep programs, a signature of some charters.
“There are some parents who know their child will never be accepted by a private or charter school. They have a special education need, or the parent needs transportation, needs
christine kushner, former wake county school board member
the meal offerings that public schools have.”
In addition, charter schools can be just as exclusionary as private schools, Kushner argued. That’s often because they offer fewer support services compared to traditional public schools. Free and reduced lunch programs are rare, and some charters may require parents to do things like buy school uniforms or volunteer for a certain number of hours each month.
One of the biggest obstacles is transportation. Charters typically don’t have a bus system, placing an added burden on parents to arrange for school pickups and drop-offs.
Christley, for example, drives her son 20 minutes to and from school each day. She also serves as vice president of the school’s Parent Teacher Organization. While Christley has a full-time job, her boss is very “family first,” she said. “So I’m allowed to be more flexible with my hours and prioritize volunteering when I need to.”
That’s not the case for everyone.
“There are some parents who know their child will never be accepted by a private or charter school,” said Kushner. “They have a special education need, or the parent needs transportation, needs the meal offerings that public schools have.”
Public education advocates say more accountability and transparency is needed when it comes to charter schools. The Public Schools First NC report advised the state to put a moratorium on new charter openings until reforms are made.
The nonprofit’s recommendations include banning the for-profit model and education management organizations, and returning oversight power to the State Board of Education, where it once rested. Charters should also be required to follow the same rules as traditional public schools and create detailed plans about how to serve vulnerable students, the report stated.
Kushner argues that more investment is needed in the public school system—not just financially but also from families with school-age children.
“In the end, you can’t just think about your own child. You have to think of other people’s children,” Kushner said. “What’s best for your child is a peer group and a future society where all these kids have had a great chance to get a great education.”
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