Changes to Course Offerings and Teaching Assignments Brought on by Budget Cuts

The Watauga County Schools logo. Photo Credits: Watauga County Schools

Rebecca Billette, Junior Editor and News Desk Lead

Bridget Flaherty, Feature Desk Lead

Class registration for the 2025-2026 school year came with surprising changes. Modifications to the structure of classes like band, orchestra, and creative writing suprised students as they tried to make their schedule for the upcoming school year. Students have many questions about why these changes have occurred, and the administration hopes they can provide some answers.

“It's really a combination of a couple of factors. When COVID happened, all school systems were giving money called ESSER dollars and they were for a limited time. They were given to districts so they could increase personnel to combat learning loss,” said Dr. Leslie Alexander, the Superintendent of the Watauga County School (WCS) system. “And so our district, like other districts across the state, increased the number of employees so that we could address those learning loss needs. Those dollars are now gone.”

Concerning the loss of COVID funding, WCS attempted to cut costs all school year. However, the school district faced additional challenges recently when it comes to its typical source of income: state funding.

“We're funded a year in arrears. So we're funded this year based on what our enrollment last year was,” said Alexander. “Last year, which was my first year here, we were down 97 students, which equated to about 7.5 teaching positions. 33 of those 97 students were kindergartners, believe it or not. So this year, for next year's funding, we're down another 93 students.” 

With lower enrollment numbers, funding has decreased further, giving the Central Office staff some tough choices to make. WCS has been working to avoid having to fire personnel. Their strategy has mostly been not rehiring staff who resign and moving teachers around throughout the district to maximize their efficiency.

“We will need to make sure that the teachers move, instead of hiring new teachers into

the district, make sure that we are effectively utilizing the staffing that we have,” said Alexander. “So a teacher may be teaching at a Cove Creek or a Valle Crucis this year, and they may have to move to a Parkway or wherever the student enrollment is. That doesn't mean they can never go back there, but we just have to utilize our staffing effectively.”

WCS has attempted to spread the effects of these challenges throughout the schools, so no one program is affected more than others. The Central Office also expressed that many of these course changes were a last resort, and they attempted to cut costs elsewhere first.

“The first thing was some resignations at the Central Office,” said Alexander. “In fact, we had a director of school improvement who retired. We chose not to replace that position, thereby cutting a Central Office position. We had a receptionist who got a new role. So we did not replace that position. We're just like, ‘Okay, guys, we all need to pitch in and answer the phone.’”

These decisions required time and careful consideration, leading administration to not be able to communicate these changes with students as quickly as they would have liked.

“We probably could have communicated earlier, if we had just gone in and said, ‘This is what we're doing,’” Alexander explained. “But I'm afraid that would have had some really harsh impacts on people. And we wanted to avoid that the best we could.”

Administration was aware these changes would come as a shock to students and have tried to make the least amount of modifications possible.

"What I can tell you is that we will make sure to do the best we can to offer the classes the students need and to align all of our district personnel so that they are teaching in areas where we feel like they're highly qualified,” said Alexander.

Even though there will be some unprecedented changes, Dr. Alexander and the rest of administration are doing what they can to ensure that students have a variety of options for classes next year and are searching for the best options to adjust to the current issues the school system is facing. 

“You're never going to be able to make everybody perfectly happy. That's

just not life,” said Alexander, “But you want to do what you can to accommodate the most students as possible.”