- Wake County Public School System leaders recently said the Opportunity Scholarship Program is harming WCPSS financially, even though per-student funding for WCPSS has grown from $8,363 to $11,673 since the program began in 2015
- WCPSS leaders said Opportunity Scholarships shouldn’t be expanded, because public schools are not “fully funded,” by which they meant giving districts all the money they say they need
- In other words, “fully funded” is another term for giving school districts a blank check and claiming it is for education, even as WCPSS used only 0.15 percent of federal Covid relief funding for tutoring while spending over three-fourths of it on bonuses and supplements
Last week leaders from the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) came together for a press conference to share their belief that legislation expanding the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) would harm local public schools.
Chris Heagarty, chairman of the Wake County School Board, and Dr. Robert Taylor, WCPSS superintendent, spoke at length about how they believe OSP robs needed dollars from underfunded public schools and how OSP schools supposedly lack accountability.
The allegations were mostly old complaints that have been repeatedly disproven. For specifics see here and here. Taylor made one new allegation when he said that unlike the public schools, OSP has no testing regulations. Taylor continued:
Now, as a public education institution, we believe in accountability, we test our students, the state tests our teachers. This voucher program does not institute those same regulations for public schools. There are no guidelines, and it’s possible that we could even see outcomes that private schools can raise their tuition.
Taylor’s charge was simply untrue. Section § 115C-562.5(a)4 of the North Carolina General Statutes requires all nonpublic schools that accept OSP students to administer a nationally standardized test or an equivalent measure in grades three and higher. By July 15 of each year, schools are required to submit test scores to the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority, the agency that administers OSP. In grade 11, OSP students are required to take the ACT. In addition, schools are required to furnish to parents or guardians of Opportunity Scholarship students a written explanation of the student’s progress including test scores.
Heagarty based his opposition to the expansion of the Opportunity Scholarship Program on the notion that North Carolina public schools are not “fully funded.” He said, “While we understand that families might want or need some school choices beyond what we can offer in public school, we strongly believe that public funds should first be used to support public education.”
Translation: Heagarty is saying there are funding problems at WCPSS and that OSP will make them worse. His comments prompt two questions: What have been the overall budget trends for WCPSS for the last several years? And what does “fully funded” mean?
To address the first question, let’s look at some recent budget data. According to the North Carolina Public Schools Statistical Profile, in 2015 — the first year of operation of OSP — WCPSS had a student population of 153,488. Total expenditures (local, state, and federal) were $1,283,602,558, resulting in an average support of $8,363 per student.
In 2023, the latest year data are available, WCPSS had a total student population of 157,847. Total expenditures had grown to $1,842,507,022, and average support per student had increased to $11,673.
How Support per Student at Wake County Public Schools Has Grown Since the Opportunity Scholarship Program Began in 2015
| Year | Per-Student Support |
| 2014–15 | $8,363 |
| 2015–16 | $8,536 |
| 2016–17 | $8,742 |
| 2017–18 | $9,080 |
| 2018–19 | $9,413 |
| 2019–20 | $9,615 |
| 2020–21 | $9,980 |
| 2021–22 | $11,869 |
| 2022–23 | $11,673 |
Source: North Carolina Public Schools Statistical Profile
For 2023–24, WCPSS’s operating budget was listed at $2,211,765,530, with per-student support up to $13,508.
If we limit the analysis to the latest data available, over the last nine years during the operation of OSP, student enrollment in WCPSS increased just 2.8 percent, while spending increased 43.5 percent and per-student support increased 39.6 percent (adjusted for inflation, those increases were 11.6 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively).
Despite these realities, over the last several years most members of the Wake County Board of Education continued to assert a need for more funding.
And — let’s remember — more funding did come. Since 2021 the federal government has distributed more than $6.3 billion in funds to North Carolina schools targeted for Covid relief. Of that amount, WCPSS has received approximately $438 million and spent about $428 million to date. Of that amount, $269 million (63 percent) was spent on salaries and $59 million (14 percent) on benefits. So more than three of every four federal Covid dollars WCPSS has spent has gone toward salaries and benefits.
Of the money that was spent on salaries, much of it was spent on bonuses and supplements — about $143.2 million over three years. That’s about $47.7 million in bonuses and supplements each year.
What about how the money was not spent? It is noteworthy that expenditures for Tutoring (Within the Instructional Day) and Tutorial Pay totaled a paltry $661,000 — or only about 0.15 percent of all WCPSS Covid expenditures. Tutoring services are critical for getting students caught up from the learning loss suffered during Covid shutdowns.
In addition, zero dollars were spent on general, HVAC, electrical, and plumbing contracts for capital projects in Wake County public schools over the last three years. It is a remarkable omission considering the recent HVAC issues in WCPSS schools.
Nevertheless, Heagarty and Taylor continue to say WCPSS is not being fully funded. We hear that a lot. But what does it mean? Last week Taylor told us what he believes fully funded means:
So, when we talk about fully funding, what we mean is give every district the resources that they need to make choices about education in the local community that is a state initiative in North Carolina. And when we talk about fully funding, it simply means give us the ability to use local funding for the intended purpose, brick and mortar, but also provide the state funding so that all districts have the resources to provide the education that they need. And so we can talk definitely more about that, but that’s simply what it means. [Transcript edited for readability.]
Got that? I don’t. To me it sounds like “fully funding” is giving school districts all the money they say they need to make choices so that local schools have the money they need to educate students — in other words, “fully funding” is a blank check. In some ways, “fully funding” is a school district’s version of school choice.
Isn’t this what the budget process is all about, however? Prioritizing needs and accomplishing missions within limited resources? If WCPSS doesn’t have the resources that Heagarty and Taylor think they should have, it’s because a competing budget vision won out. If Heagarty and Taylor think WCPSS is not fully funded, they need to stop complaining about it and persuade decisionmakers and the public about the need for more money. Showing better stewardship of WCPSS’s already increasing funding would help. When they misprioritize spending away from student learning, however, they help make the case for school choice options, including OSP expansion.
Will OSP expansion hamper WCPSS’s schools funding? A review of budget trends and spending says otherwise. Wake County public schools have much more money per student now than they did before OSP started. Chris Heagarty and Dr. Robert Taylor would do well to review district spending and the fuzzy thinking behind “fully funded” schools before blaming parents who are doing nothing more than trying to get a better education for their children and the policymakers who are willing to help them.
