Data: Many NC schools have no assistant principal

Many charter schools have no assistant principals at all, according to data from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.

That’s a problem, Robeson County school officials told the North Carolina State Board of Education this week.

There, the school board decided to fund enough assistant principals for this school year for every school to have one. State data show the district had only 28 assistant principals last year for its 35 schools.

Principals inevitably have to be away from campus, Public Schools of Robeson County School Board Member Craig Lowery said. Lowery is a former principal in the district. He said principals attend workshops and meetings. Without an assistant principal, a teacher may be asked to serve as principal, when the principal is away.

“Having an assistant on that campus that can handle those things not only when you’re there but also when you’re away, that’s money well spent,” Lowery said. He’s anxious to see how the investment will pay off for the district.

A WRAL News analysis found that the state, as a whole, had about 100 assistant principals for every 82 schools during the 2020-21 school year. But that doesn’t mean every school had an assistant principal. WRAL News found that 57 school districts had more schools than assistant principals, and 71 public charter schools had no assistant principals at all.

The effort in Robeson County to add more assistant principals came after district leaders were the inaugural class of the new North Carolina Leadership Academy, via a partnership with DPI.

School Board Chairman Mike Smith said it became clear in that training that principals needed to be the instructional leaders of their schools. An assistant principal can be the operational leader, allowing the principal to focus on instruction, he said.

The court approved the plan as a part of the 27-year-old so-called “Leandro” lawsuit against the state, filed by family and school boards in five low-wealth counties, over what the plaintiffs said was insufficient and inequitable funding of schools. Courts have agreed that schools were insufficiently funded.

Since the lawsuit was filed, funding for education has risen, though the ratio of assistant principals to students hasn’t returned to what it once was.

WRAL News was able to find compatible data on the number of schools and the number of assistant principals for all 115 state school districts and 169 other public districts and charter schools. Of those, 156 school districts and charter schools had at least one assistant principal for every school.

Data on assistant principals is recorded by districts, so it’s not clear if districts with a one-to-one ratio of assistant principals to schools actually have one assistant principal in each school.

The state, which is legally charged with funding educational operations, pays for one month of an assistant principal’s contract for every 98.53 students a school has, State Department of Public Instruction Chief Financial Officer Alexis Schauss told the state board in a presentation this week. As a result, a school can only hire a 10-month contract assistant principal (the length of the school year) if it has 983 students.

North Carolina’s ratio of students to assistant principal is better than one for every 983 students, in part because, during the 2020-21 school year, counties funded 827 assistant principals themselves, compared to 2,329 funded by the state. The federal government paid for 67 assistant principals.