Wake County Schools has only three executives paid over $200K

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools had 22 executives paid more than $200,000, while Wake County Public School System had only three, a gap that underscored two very different approaches to running North Carolina’s biggest school districts.

In Wake, the lower number came as the district served more than 161,000 students and employed 21,929 people in 2024. The system’s highest reported salary was $338,692, and its average salary was $56,722. Wake said its 2024-25 salary schedules remained in effect and that no changes had been proposed for 2025-26, while also describing its pay, graduate pay and local supplements as among the highest in the state.

That restraint comes with a governance tradeoff. Wake’s leaders have been under pressure to show that leaner executive pay protects taxpayers, even as the district works in one of the state’s fastest-growing counties and manages a payroll large enough to rival major employers. In April 2026, Wake schools were seeking a $25 million increase from the county while also identifying millions in cuts, putting compensation and staffing decisions squarely at the center of the budget fight.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg made a different argument. The district, which said it was the 16th largest public school system in the United States and the second largest in North Carolina, served 141,000 students in 185 schools and had nearly 20,000 employees. CMS said public school systems try to pay executives enough to keep them from leaving for the private sector, where they can often make more money. Crystal L. Hill, selected as superintendent in July 2023 after serving as interim leader, later helped deliver what the district described as its first fully funded county budget request in recent history and led a $2.5 billion bond campaign CMS called the largest in North Carolina history.

Wake Superintendent Robert P. Taylor brought his own resume to the debate. He previously served as deputy state superintendent in Mississippi, spent two years at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and led Bladen County Schools for nearly a decade before taking the Wake job. His background added weight to the question now facing the district: whether keeping executive pay lower helps preserve public money, or whether it risks making Wake less competitive for top leadership in a system that already operates on a scale few districts can match.