Wake County voters will decide on a $680 million school bond this November, about $49 million of which will go toward heating, ventilation and air conditioning replacements at 21 schools.
The loan would increase property taxes by $4.10 for every $100,000 in property value. The county often borrows money via bonds that aren’t approved by voters, but it gets lower interest rates when voters approve of tax increases that back that borrowing.
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Wake County commissioners approved putting the bond on the ballot earlier this year. The Wake County school board has already planned for where the funds would go based on recommendations from the school district.
The bond is focused on school renovations and repairs and less on new schools than prior bonds as the school district’s enrollment stagnates. About $98.7 million of the bond would be spent on work to replace things that have reached the end of their useful lives, such as roofs and old HVAC systems. The district said about half, roughly $49 million, of that lifecycle repair money will go toward HVAC. Renovations at other schools could include some HVAC work.
The district lists the 21 schools that will get equipment replacements on its bond webpage. Those include schools with reported air conditioning outages this school year, including Millbrook Magnet High, Lynn Road Elementary, and Penny Road Elementary.
Wake County School Board Chairman Tyler Swanson said the work will be done either way, but the bond is the most affordable path forward for the district, including for HVAC replacements.
“So students can focus on teaching and learning, and we can continue to have historic [academic] growth that we just saw this year,” Swanson said.
Because it’s not recurring, bond money can only be put toward one-time expenses, so it’s useful for replacing systems that are approaching or past their lifespans.
But it doesn’t tackle routine maintenance — which Swanson and others acknowledge is lacking — or salaries of comparatively underpaid HVAC technicians. The district has roughly $800 million in deferred maintenance, which includes about $200 million in deferred maintenance for HVAC. Putting off routine preventive maintenance has led to some HVAC issues, district leaders have said. That’s even affecting HVAC systems that aren’t past their lifespans.
“Some of these newer schools that are less than 10 years old, five years old, are having significant HVAC issues,” Swanson said.
He attributes part of those failures in schools with new systems to personnel gaps.
“When we looked at the organizational study, we cannot pay our technicians the same amount that they would receive in a private sector,” Swanson said. “If we're facing these concerns, facing recruitment issues, we need some partnerships [with the state General Assembly] that can help increase that compensation, so we can retain and recruit the talented technicians that we need to ensure that these issues are getting addressed.”
School district critics like the John Locke Foundation have argued Wake should have spent more of its temporary pandemic stimulus dollars on HVAC equipment. State data shows Wake didn’t spend any of its more than $400 million on HVAC contracts, compared to a 5.9% average statewide.
In a recent blog post, Robert Luebke, the Foundation’s education director, noted that the HVAC issues have been known for years.
WRAL reported in 2025 that the district became so far behind on HVAC maintenance and replacements after years of prioritizing new schools and employee pay.
Swanson believes the bond is a necessary step toward fixing the county's repeated HVAC failures but cannot be the only step.
Wake County parent and school advocate Lindsey Pittman hopes to see the measure pass but compares the district’s funding situation to tending wounds.
“This measure is a band-aid, but we need that band-aid,” Pittman said. “We need to have HVAC in our schools.”
Pittman, who is a parent at a school that’s recently had HVAC issues, believes the district needs more funding help from the state and believes the HVAC failures this year have shed a light on the issue.
“The fact that some administration and classrooms are having to go to work and go to learn in hot, uncomfortable environments,” Pittman said. “I can't imagine what it would be like for a young developing brain trying to do math in the heat.”
By law, the state is tasked with funding education, and counties are tasked with funding facilities. But both fund both, and county spending on education has skyrocketed in recent years to $5 billion statewide. More than $750 million of that comes from Wake County.
WRAL asked Wake County GOP whether it supports the measure and have not received an answer. Wake Democrats have their support of the bond published on their website.