Durham Public Schools asks Durham County for $15.98 million in local funding, cites bus driver shortages and facilities backlog

Durham Public Schools Superintendent Anthony Lewis urged the Durham County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday to provide additional local funding to help stabilize staffing and address aging school facilities as the district finalizes its 2025–26 request.

Lewis said the district’s request includes about $15.98 million in local ongoing and expansion items and asked the county to continue an $8 million capital outlay allocation. "Rebuilding trust within the community" and improving transportation, he said, were recurring themes from public listening sessions the district held during Lewis’s first 100 days in office.

The request breaks into three categories, Lewis and Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Teeter told commissioners: continuation costs for operating (their estimate of what it will cost to run the district next year), expansion items for targeted investments and a separate capital outlay ask. Teeter said the district assumed a 3% statewide raise for budget planning, then described how competing state proposals would affect that assumption. "We were dealing with a budget potential budget deficit of…