A year after Durham schools were rocked by protests and walk-outs over salary cuts, the teachers’ union involved in the controversy said financial problems still haven’t been resolved and “dysfunction” plagues district operations.
Durham Public Schools (DPS) faced a major scandal last spring that centered on the accidental overpayment of 1,300 school employees between July and December 2023, which put the district millions of dollars over budget. Administrators quickly moved to address the issue by instituting a slew of salary cuts in January 2024, but community members were outraged when many workers who had been on staff for years had their wages reduced to those of a new hire.
The DPS Board of Education eventually released a report revealing that the error was caused by implementation of a new salary schedule for “classified workers” — which includes cafeteria, maintenance and transportation employees, among other staff — that was poorly communicated and may not have adhered to state policy on calculating workers’ experience.
Employees demanded a “seat at the table” to address the pay dispute and other grievances, staging a series of protests and walk-outs to make their demands heard. Both the DPS chief financial officer and Superintendent Pascal Mubenga resigned amid the controversy.
In February 2024, the district approved 11% raises for staff as a temporary solution. A new superintendent was appointed, and in June, the county approved a new budget featuring an increase of over $27 million for the school district, much of which went to higher salaries.
But a year after the original dispute came to light, advocates for DPS employees say many of the same issues persist.
This January, the school district revealed it was facing a $7 million budget deficit, which representatives said had at one point been closer to $34 million.
“If we received $27.5 million more than baseline budget last year and then we’re coming up $35 million short, obviously that’s a concern,” said Mika Twietmeyer, president of the Durham Association of Educators (DAE), the teacher’s union that has been representing many DPS employees during the upheaval.
The school district’s new chief finance officer, Jeremy Teetor, said at a January press conference that the current multi-million-dollar shortfall is largely due to several “unbudgeted items,” including payment for 315 positions, 247 of which are vacant. He clarified that the pay raises for classified staff — those affected by last year’s salary cuts — did not contribute to the shortfall.
Twietmeyer found those unbudgeted items “really concerning,” in part because the staffing shortages they are associated with are “putting a strain on educators,” but also because she worries about how the district plans to make up for the lost funds.
“Cuts have already been made to find the money to fill that gap, and those cuts have been made without the input of people in the classroom and in the school buildings,” she said.
DPS recently announced a “Dollars and Decisions” series that seeks to engage community members in the budget development process for 2025-26, hoping “not only to inform [the] community about how [the DPS] budget works, but also to invite [community members] to participate in crucial decisions around how the money is spent.” Officials shared more details on the budget-setting process in a follow-up statement, which included a breakdown of 2024-25 budget figures.
Outside of the funding issues, Twietmeyer said “major dysfunction in certain departments” has compounded problems at DPS. She pointed to the district’s transportation services, where a shortage of bus drivers prompted the district to announce in November that routes would only operate four days a week. In January, DPS implemented “family responsibility zones,” meaning students who lived within a mile and a half of their school would not receive bus service.
“There’s been promises of extra pay for workers doing extra shifts and … and those bonuses have not been followed up with,” Twietmeyer said in reference to the bus shortage.
Moving forward, the DAE will continue to push for representation in decision-making, allowing them to advocate for sustainable solutions to issues such as understaffing. The union is working to establish a meet-and-confer policy that would create a formal negotiation process between the union and DPS administrators.
“One of our main focuses is … being able to actually have a formal seat at the table,” Twietmeyer said.
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Annie Eilers is a Trinity first-year and a staff reporter for the news department.
Ella Moore is a Trinity first-year and a staff reporter for the news department.