In This WSFCS Financial Crisis, We Are Not “All In This Together”

One of the common “loose mantras” being thrown around during this recent WSFCS financial crisis is, “We are in this together.”

No we aren’t.

Some voices are louder than others. Some are just hearing and not listening. Some things are being planned behind closed doors.

It is hard for a veteran teacher who still sends an EC student to the local public schools to look at this situation and really feel like he is “in it together” with the school board, county commissioners, Central Office, and the state government.

Well before this debacle we “were not in this together.” Deliberate gerrymandering, ignorance of the LEANDRO decision, and underfunding in one of the handful of states that outlaws public sector employee collective bargaining is just a foundation for how teachers in WSFCS feel.

“We are not in this together” when the very day before students come back to schools where educators and staff have been trying to prepare to do more with less, we receive this email:

Are teachers part of this decision making process? Nope. Why? Because we are not “all in this together.”

It’s hard for a teacher who has been in this district for over 20 years and has a child with an IEP crafted over years to believe that cutting millions from the “Exceptional Children’s program ratios and staffing” as yet ANOTHER CUT TO SCHOOLS is “togetherness.”

It is hard to listen to a press conference that announces a committee to be made of appointees from the school board, the county commissioners, and the superintendent’s office and at the same time not include teachers.

In the Winston-Salem Journal article that links to that press conference video, the scope of time that has allowed this crisis to grow reaches well before the pandemic.

The comprehensive, three-months long study into school district finances showed a number of problems dating to 2017. They include a failure to address issues raised in years of annual audits; not adjusting staffing to align with declining enrollment; and a pattern of spending beyond its means, particularly once federal COVID-relief dollars dried up in 2024.

Years of sloppy financial management have led the school district to where it is now, Interim Superintendent Catty Moore said at a press conference Thursday.

“The financial challenges that we have did not happen overnight,” she said. “This has been building for years.”

During that span Interim Superintendent Catty Moore stated that “the district has had four chief financial officers, four superintendents, three school boards and considerable turnover in the finance and human resources departments.”

Many of the teachers who may be directly targeted with another round of staffing cuts and indirectly affected by the results on schools and students have been in our schools that entire time – some in the same exact classrooms in the same schools.

No. We are not all in this together especially in a state that refuses to even pass a new budget for schools when it is due but is happy to allow companies like Duke Energy to raise rates because of “costs.” And if you are a state employee on the state health plan through Aetna, the rise in premiums this coming year can make it feel like you are taking a cut in salary.

No. We are not in this together.