There’s a beautiful moment in 2021’s blockbuster smackdown Godzilla vs. Kong when the two monsters, after trading near-fatal blows for a majority of the film, join forces to take down the man-made enemy Mechagodzilla when it proves to be stronger than either of them alone. The two titans tear the head off of their robot lizard challenger and go their separate ways, recognizing each other’s territory in an uneasy standoff that presumably endures after the credits roll and the plane that you’re watching the movie on lands.
Durham Public Schools (DPS) superintendent Anthony Lewis and Durham Association of Educators (DAE) president Mika Twietmeyer aren’t quite ready to team up and fight their own Mechagodzilla—a draft county budget that falls $6 million short of the DPS board’s request—but they seem to be, for now, at least past the most hostile stage of their relationship.
“I think the tone tonight was more collaborative,” Twietmeyer told INDY after a public meeting on Tuesday at the staff development center in which the union and the administration worked through some of the union’s biggest priorities. “It wasn’t as, maybe, collaborative as we would have hoped.”
The two giants found most agreement on measures to protect students from ICE as immigrant families and communities are targeted by Trump’s vicious agenda. In the most standoffish moments, the DAE pushed administration for financial commitments that the administration isn’t prepared to make, especially as the county weighs the district’s budget request.
Lewis and the board have officially asked the county commission for $222 million for FY 2025-26. That would be about $16 million more than the county’s public school system received last year. In county manager Claudia Hager’s draft budget, which serves as something of a counteroffer to the DPS ask, Hager suggested giving only $10 million of that increase.
Compared to other Triangle counties, that’s a pretty generous bump. Orange County is considering a budget that wouldn’t even meet its two school districts’ stated continuation needs, while Wake County is looking at reducing the supplement it pays to its teachers.
That $6 million gap would mean that some of Lewis and the board’s asks—let alone the additional items that DAE is asking for—won’t be funded. DPS’s request, for instance, would fund a $200 monthly supplement for bus drivers. DAE representative Shameka Graves asked Lewis why bus monitors, who ride buses with students, weren’t included.
“We need to invest in all of our staff and [make] sure that we can do it in a fiscally sound way,” said Lewis. When pressed for a solid commitment, he added that “I’m open to exploring if financially we can.”
Twietmeyer also asked Lewis if he would commit to a year of backpay for those who are included in a proposed expansion of master’s pay.
“I am committed to investigating to see what that cost would be and what implication it would have on this current year’s budget,” said Lewis, though he declined to provide a timeline despite Twietmeyer’s nudges.
The meeting was also a good opportunity for Lewis to hear directly from staff. In one exchange, the DAE pushed for contracts to be sent to teachers every year.
“If teachers are not getting those contracts, I need to know about that,” said Lewis.
Educators in the audience, who were armed with red and green cards to signal their approval or disapproval, vigorously flapped their red cards in the air to indicate that there was indeed an issue he should know about. Even Lewis chuckled at that.
“OK, I guess it’s loud and clear,” said Lewis.
While they didn’t officially participate, most board members were in the audience—board chair Millicent Rogers opted for a highly visible spot in the front corner of the room, and board member Natalie Beyer at one point appeared to lean over from the front row to convey a message to Lewis via a telephone game-like line of administrators.
The meeting was something of a precursor to the meet and confer sessions between DAE and Lewis’s administration that are scheduled to begin with the 2025-26 school year. On Thursday night, the DPS school board spent hours hashing out some small adjustments to its recently passed meet and confer policy to bring it more in line with the union’s preferred version. The board also went through a “prioritization exercise” to begin to work through what may not make the cut if they don’t receive their full funding.
“Every penny that the district is asking for is needed—and more,” Twietmeyer told INDY on Tuesday. She said that the union would push for “small budgetary items that make real, big changes for people’s lives and impact our students.”
Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].