The Wake County Board of Education is once again poised to cut millions of dollars from its budget in order to afford millions of dollars in expected cost increases.

The school district will be short $17.6 million this school year unless it can find that amount to cut from elsewhere in its budget.

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Those millions are needed to match the pay increases in the new state budget for teachers, administrators and other school employees. While the state pays for those raises, it only does so for state-funded employees. Wake County, in an effort to offer more services and academic programs than the state provides, has another roughly 4,000 employees who are locally funded. Just less than half of them are teachers and most of the rest are support service workers.

School board members have known for several weeks that budget adjustments would be needed. The district has floated $18.1 million in potential adjustments, and some would come from unexpected savings.

One suggested change would remove the planned 1% increase to the local salary supplement, saving $1.9 million. That's the supplement funded by the county that goes on top of what employees earn from their state salaries. Based on the current salary schedule, a 1% increase would amount to $7.34 to $14.40 per month, or $73 to $144 in a year, for a teacher.

The district would also be able to move $3.4 million in savings and place some local employees on state dollars, based on higher-than-expected state funding for students with disabilities, at-risk students and students with limited English proficiency. Those employees would be those who work in those areas.

Several board members asked about the potential impact of not providing that supplement.

District leaders said the modest nature of that supplement bump limits its ability to be a differentiator for the district, in terms of its ability to compete with other nearby district in hiring.

Some board members floated having a different kind of supplement or keeping it for the most veteran teachers.

The school board is scheduled to discuss the deficit during a work session Tuesday. The board could vote on making cuts as soon as Aug. 18, with the goal of paying out the raises in September paychecks.

Last month, Board Member Chris Heagarty, who chairs the board’s budget committee, warned again of impending cuts.

"We will need to make a lot of tough decisions around shared priorities," he said during his board member comments July 21.

Wake's experience with a challenging budget season is mirrored across North Carolina and the rest of the country. Schools and municipalities have struggled to adjust to a loss in temporary federal pandemic stimulus dollars and initial plans to make some of those temporary expenses permanent, such as keeping additional behavioral support specialists in schools. Schools have also faced enrollment losses, triggering automatic drops in funding from state and federal sources that are based on enrollment.

Wake's enrollment has stagnated, but its operations simply cost more. That's led to two years in a row of virtually no new money coming in but costs going up. To pay for that, the school board has made small cuts. Its budget has grown past $2.2 billion, while its operations have slightly diminished.

The Wake school board budgeted this school year for an average 3% state school employee raise, about what it budgets for each year. But without a fresh state budget for the 2025-26 school year, state lawmakers ended up raising teacher pay for the 2026-27 school year by an average of 8%. Raises were higher for less experienced teachers and lower for more experienced teachers.

That increase, coupled with smaller raises for other school employees and bonuses for everyone, mean the school board needs to find $17.6 million to give locally funded employees everything state-funded employees are set to get.

The district first forecasted the possibility of a shortfall in May, when the board had already recommended a budget to county commissioners. That was right after legislative leadership had announced an agreement on state employee raises and the average 8% teacher raise. Lawmakers passed a budget in July, and Gov. Josh Stein signed it into law later that month.

Heagarty said the board may need to reconsider some of the cuts it rejected this spring and come up with new ideas to share for its Aug. 4 work session.

"Please bring your most thoughtful, your most creative, your most dutiful selves to that discussion," he said.

This spring, the school board approved some budget adjustments that would reduce some assistance principal, literacy coach and specialty teacher funding. The board rejected a district plan to cut 130 special education teachers, as well as the district's suggestions to slightly reduce instructional support professionals and funding for lower-performing "Restart" schools. The district had announced plans to cut the teachers in March without briefing the school board. That led to weeks of pushback from special education teachers and families, as well as school board members, who contended special education was underfunded rather than overresourced.

Heagarty's remarks in July came after a request during public comment that the board hears a lot: Creating new athletic programs that are entirely free to the district except for the use of school space. Heagarty noted the benefits of sports programs but that the district has relied on generating revenues from charging for the use of facilities. It can charge outside groups to use that space but not itself for its own athletic programs.

"We know we would love to do more in our schools than we currently do," he said. "Everything that we add has an impact."