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Students, teachers and parents urge Wake County board to restore counselors and question state voucher growth

AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

Public comment at the April 22 Wake County Board of Education meeting focused on proposed cuts to school counselors and secretarial staff and on rapid growth in state private-school vouchers that speakers said diverts public funding.

Speakers at the Wake County Board of Education’s April 22 public-comment period urged the board to preserve counseling and clerical positions in next year’s budget and raised concerns about the scale of state vouchers being used for private-school tuition.

Sohan Malpa, an 11th-grade student at Menlo High School, told the board changes in the proposed 2025–26 budget would reduce counselor availability and “could have very real damage” for students who need support. Malpa said the district’s proposed counselor staffing would move to roughly one counselor per 450 students from an earlier ratio he described as one per 385; he and other speakers said a 250-to-1 counselor-to-student ratio is generally recommended. "The lack of availability of my counselor ... truly impacted my mental state, and it made me…

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