Faced with either reduction of district staffing or operating at a significant budget shortfall, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education held a vote Wednesday that Vice Chair Riza Jenkins described as feeling “not great” for everyone involved.
“We have no choice… this is not a perfect situation, no decision we make tonight is going to be good,” she said. “This is not going to be comfortable, [but] we have to make it for our kids, for our children.”
Ultimately, the board voted 4-3 to approve a plan proposed by the superintendent and her financial team to freeze and cut dozens of positions, with some of those changes happening this school year and others happening ahead of the 2025-26 academic year. Board Chair George Griffin, alongside Jenkins, Mike Sharp, and Meredith Ballew, voted to pass the tiered ‘Reduction in Force’ proposal. Board members Rani Dasi, Barbara Fedders and Vickie Feaster Fornville voted to oppose its proposed form.
During her presentation to the board, Superintendent Nyah Hamlett listed a variety of reasons for reaching this budget shortfall and concluding cuts to position as a solution. Chief among them, she said, is the district’s declining enrollment. While CHCCS will be home to around 11,000 students this academic year, Hamlett described the school district as having been staffed and operated in the last three years as if it was for more than 12,200 students — which was the recent peak of enrollment in 2019. Student populations, particularly in kindergarten and elementary schools, have steadily decreased since then as the district kept up its per pupil spending through staff positions and resources.
CHCCS Superintendent Nyah Hamlett delivers her presentation to the Board of Education on Wednesday, August 21, 2024. (Photo via Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.)
While the purpose of Wednesday’s vote was to address operating at a $5.5 million deficit in the last fiscal year, an additional goal was to not lay off any employees, which was stressed by Hamlett. The positions cut are not state-funded, but are all locally funded by the county government and special district tax funds from the Chapel Hill-Carrboro community. That means, according to the plan crafted by CHCCS leadership, the majority of the positions are not school-based or classroom-facing and all employees who choose to stay at the district will retain a role in some form.
Tier II of the plan cuts 24 full-time positions in the district’s central office and in ancillary support/central service areas, and will be effective in the coming weeks. According to Hamlett, 13 of those positions are vacant and frozen — with the 11 employees in the others offered roles currently vacant at schools across CHCCS’ system. The projected savings for the current fiscal year are $2 million, with it becoming $2.4 million recurring each year afterward. Some of the eliminated roles are the Chief of School Support and Wellness, Director of Mental Health and Wellness, Director of Family and Community Engagement, communications specialists, and various coordinators.
Tier III of the approved cuts will be 57 full-time positions, which are described as both district-wide support positions and certain school-based positions at elementary and secondary levels. The roles will be frozen if they already are unfilled or become vacant from departures in the 2024-25 school year. CHCCS leadership said those changes become permanently cut in the 2025-26 budget, and any remaining employees in the affected roles will be offered a reassignment for the 2025-26 school year. The changes are expected to save the district $830,000 in the current fiscal year, and an estimated $5 million in subsequent years when the positions are eliminated in 2025-26.
Hamlett said despite administrative and districtwide staff making up 3.3 percent of the district’s annual budget, they represent more than 40 percent of the positions being eliminated.
“Despite the disproportionate burden placed on the roles in the current year,” said the superintendent, “we do accept these sacrifices to protect direct classroom resources and to ensure the long-term stability of our district.”
The budget shortfall itself is no surprise to the district. CHCCS leaders alerted families and local governments about their spending plans in 2022, noting that keeping up teacher raises and role retention through the use of their fund balance would not be sustainable. The projections in February for the shortfall were $2.5 million, and Tier I changes through attrition were implemented in the spring. But the retention of positions and salaries CHCCS had expected to lapse ended up ballooning the cost to more than $5 million. With the spending, the district’s fund balance decreased from nearly $16 million at the end of the 2019-20 academic year to owing $73,445 by the end of the 2023-24 fiscal year. It is the lowest fund balance amount since 2004.
A graphic of the year-over-year amounts of CHCCS’ budget shortfall and levels in the district fund balance, which has been the source of covering the operating differences. (Photo via Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.)
Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Scott described the situation as “dire” based on the lack of a fund balance and requirement to pass a balanced budget for 2025-26 in just nine months’ time. He said the expenses every month, based on current staffing and salaries, would outpace the amount appropriated by Orange County’s government and warned the board about digging a financial hole that would “continue to get bigger and bigger.”
“The direness is now, and not a year out,” Scott said in response to a comment from Griffin about urgency.
The decision faced stiff public comment from educators and advocates asking for the board to reconsider its options. Representatives for instructional technology facilitators positions, instructional coaches, and other positions facing cuts shared their concern on the impact of operations and ability for employees to deliver support to classrooms.
School board members echoed those frustrations — but maintained the fact that something had to be done in advance of balancing a budget for the next fiscal year and addressing a lack of fund balance. Those who opposed the motion on Wednesday agreed that cuts needed to be made, but each had different reasons for wanting to delay the vote or not hold it. Dasi advocated for not cutting a Pre-K mental health specialist role or reducing secondary school counselor contracts to 10 months from 11 months. Fornville said she wished to shuffle around positions from Tier II to Tier III to lessen the impact on CHCCS’ “most marginalized kids,” while Fedders advocated for delaying a vote on Tier III cuts until the next board meeting to have a clearer personal understanding on the position cuts.
The quartet who voted in favor pointed to the urgency of addressing the budget shortfall combined with a year-long runway for the district to best address the Tier III position cuts and reassignments. Jenkins pointed to “immense pushback” from educators and the public when the topic of assessing positions was brought up before the district reached its budget cliff, delaying any decision until now.
“This is the reality,” said the vice chair, “and so this is where we’ve finally had to put positions, dollars, the situation we’ve seen painted publicly in board meetings [on the table] and we have to make a decision. We can’t wait.”
Appeal hearings with the Board of Education for the position eliminations will be held on September 3 and 4 for eligible employees impacted, according to the district. The full meeting from Wednesday night, as well as meeting materials and presentation slides, can be accessed on CHCCS’ Granicus page.
Featured photo via Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.
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Highest taxes in the state but not a clue how to manage the budget. Ridiculous. This is just a pre-cursor to a requested tax hike.
I would love the see how much of the budget has gone to non-state-required testing services and classroom technology (like the smart boards that don’t work, the computers that the kids are shackled to). Less testing and less screens would be a vast improvement and would save money. These are two reasons a lot of folks who can afford it take their kids to private schools.
Why do any of these people still have their jobs? This is gross incompetence and mismanagement