I’ll pay more.

I’ll pay more in property taxes to help fund our public schools.

I’ll pay more to make sure that our exceptional children with law-binding IEPs get the services they require before lawsuits from special needs parents start gaining traction in the court system and ultimately make the district pay more in the end.

I’ll pay more so that we can give educators the resources they need to support students in all classrooms. With RIFs and attrition due this past school year, this system hemorrhaged almost as many educators than it lost in student enrollment. The more turnover you have in the educator pool in this system, the higher the price ultimately in teaching our students.

I’ll pay more to raise our local supplements and salaries so that we can have enough bus drivers and maintenance professionals to adequately transport our students and keep facilities working.

I’ll pay more property taxes so that we can give our sports coaches and athletic directors enough financial incentive to stay in our school system mentoring our students. And if you truly understood the finances of public-school athletics (especially high schools), you would find that athletics help with financing other endeavors in schools. It’s a return on investment that aways benefits schools.

I’ll pay more so that each school can have full-time access to a nurse and social worker.

I’ll pay more in property taxes to offset the drop in federal funding for student meals because in a system that supports a lot of students in poverty, public schools might offer the most stable source of nutrition for many of our kids.

I’ll pay more property taxes so that each school can have its own testing coordinator. While private schools that accept voucher money do not have to administer state tests, public schools must administer thousands of mandated exams with every conceivable accommodation allowed.

I’ll pay more for each school to have at least one more assistant principal. Some schools don’t even have a full-time AP. The burnout experienced by our current administrators is at an all-time high. They are the glue that keeps schools running safely and stay accessible.

I’ll pay more in property taxes to keep The Special Children’s School and The Children’s Center within the school system. Because private schools that take voucher money do not have to adhere to Individual with Disabilities Education Act, public schools must be able to accept and educate these students.

I’ll pay more so that we can invest in our public schools because a strong public school system drives long-term economic growth, reduces social costs, and gives stability to a democracy that seems to be more fragile every day.

Guilford County already is making an 8% increase in their local funds for public schools. Durham and Wake Counties have already made requests for at least 25 million more for their schools and their local supplements are much higher for teachers than WSFCS. Mecklenburg County already has added another 25 million dollars to its public-school funds. They aren’t sitting around blaming the state or complaining about a local union. They are acting on the situation.

And finally, I will give more money to campaigns of candidates for county commissioner offices who do not look at the finances of the local school system through a myopic lens constructed last century and fail to listen to the voices of the people who are on the front lines of public education.

In a state that is running on a budget created in 2023, that is one of just a handful to outlaw public sector employee collective bargaining, that refused to uphold the LEANDRO decision, and that has the most opaque voucher system that seems to only benefit families already sending their students to private schools, I will pay more in property taxes to aid our public schools here in Winston-Salem / Forsyth County.

And I will urge any voter to vote for pro-public school candidates in the upcoming elections on both the local and state level.

Because, once you lose the public school system, you may never get it back.