WUNC profiles finance officers from a few North Carolina school districts. They want the state to send them more money (naturally) and grant districts more budgetary flexibility. The latter is one of the goals of the Joint Legislative Task Force on Education Finance Reform, which is considering ways to improve North Carolina’s ridiculous school funding model.
As for the issue of increasing education funding, the WUNC story includes a helpful chart that details the efforts made by lawmakers to boost it following the Great Recession.