By Jackson Colo and Jesper Runheim

Editor-in-Chief and Staff Writer

    In May 2025, the Winston-Salem Forsyth County School District fell $46 million short of its 2024-2025 budget. More than a year later, after careful rebuilding, the district has resolved the debt. But with the crisis in the past, community members are left pondering one question: at what cost?

    At R.J. Reynolds High School and schools across WS/FCS, the lasting repercussions continue to jar both students and staff. Last calendar year, WS/FCS approved and carried out a reduction in force that eliminated numerous positions across the district. Now, the reduced counselor and teacher staffing has left schools struggling to pick up the pieces. Reynolds biology and environmental science teacher Christie Rybak has been saddled with classes of up to 46 students, presenting a new set of challenges.

    “It’s still possible to do small lab groups, but I don’t have enough supplies for 46 students,” Rybak said. “We have a limited amount of resources, making science harder to do.”

    In addition to larger class sizes, student scheduling conflicts have been common. While many frustrated parents and students are quick to blame school counselors, a look inside the guidance office reveals the true root of the errors. 

    “I would say that 100% of the [scheduling issues] stemmed from the cuts,” Director of Student Services Nicole Beale said. “Our data manager, who handles all scheduling, took a job somewhere else, and because of the budget, we weren’t allowed to hire a new data manager until the summer. What that meant from an organizational standpoint was that calls and emails were going unanswered.” 

    Adding to the stress of the lost staff member, upwards of one hundred students were added to each counselor’s roster following the removal of a counselor position. The shift from five guidance counselors to four, along with the loss of a data manager, made handling errors far more difficult. Beale hopes that WS/FCS will provide more resources to ensure scheduling security going forward. 

    “At a minimum, we need a full-time counselor plus more [paid] hours in the summer,” Beale said. “And then, we also have to have a fifth counselor if we’re going to be [overenrolled] like this year. We had five counselors for over thirty years.” 

    Reynolds staff members aren’t the only ones spread thin. At the Career Center, where classes operate on a daily eight-period schedule, teachers are struggling to find balance as a lifelong norm ends. 

    In prior years, Career Center teachers taught classes during five of eight periods a day. However, due to staff reductions, teachers now teach during six of the eight periods. This change has significantly impacted teachers like Akwete McAlister, who teach multiple distinct courses and now juggle more responsibilities such as bus duty. 

    “When it was announced that the [budget crisis] had been resolved, I felt like they left out all of the jobs that had been cut and how people were taking on more responsibilities,” McAlister said. “After I am finished teaching [three courses] at the end of the day, I’m exhausted. It feels like even with me being very dedicated this year, I’m still underwater. With all of my responsibilities. I can’t catch up.” 

    As staff members continue to deal with increased obligations, many call on the North Carolina legislature to invest more in public schools across the state now that the budget crisis has been resolved.

    “I think that the crisis is not going away when we continue to have a North Carolina assembly that does not want to put money towards public education,” McAlister said. “We have a legislature that’s not interested in putting money into public education. I think that’s only going to get worse.”

    The budget restructuring doesn’t mean that the district has stalled all hiring forever, though. Looking forward, Reynolds math teacher Jakob Diskin is encouraged by recent staff news.

    “Because Reynolds went up so much in enrollment, we’re actually getting a couple more positions,” said Diskin. “That is a step in the right direction, and it makes for a hard semester this semester, but it makes for a much better semester for the future.”