RALEIGH (September 22, 2023) – It’s simply not enough.
At a time when North Carolina children started school with 3,500 teaching positions vacant and with more than 20% of state jobs vacant,1 state legislators approved a budget today – almost three months late – that provides teachers and state employees raises of 4% this year and 3% next year.
That doesn’t cut it.
North Carolina ranks an embarrassing 46th in beginning teacher pay and 34th in average teacher pay.2 Yet the $39,000 in starting teacher pay included in the state budget falls $4,000 short of what Alabama legislators approved for starting teachers there last year.3
Local supplements could raise that starting pay by varying amounts. And school bus drivers will get an additional 2% raise.4 But what is it that Republicans in Alabama get that Republicans in North Carolina – particularly the NC Senate – don’t?
In percentage terms, raises will be larger for teachers at the start of the pay scale – 10.8% over two years – but just 3.6% over two years for teachers with more than 15 years of experience.
Those raises are not enough to close the gap with other states and, even more important, not enough to fill a shrunken teacher pipeline in what is now the 9th-largest state. North Carolina’s hallowed No. 1 ranking for business5 won’t last long if we don’t prepare a reliable workforce.
After two years of so-called ‘transitory’ inflation, and even with a $4.8 billion budget surplus,6 legislators didn’t even award teachers and other state employees bonuses to contend with elevated prices.
And continuing the legislature’s defiance, the new budget comes nowhere close to satisfying the plan agreed to by both sides after nearly three decades of litigation in the Leandro lawsuit over state funding of public schools.7
Then the Senate needlessly prolonged budget negotiations by insisting North Carolina needs casinos. When school started last month, teachers didn’t know how much they will be paid this year. And when the budget was finally released Wednesday afternoon, legislators and the public had less than 24 hours to review more than 1,400 pages of budget documents.
Earlier this year, Gov. Roy Cooper called for 18% raises for teachers over two years. To his credit, House Speaker Tim Moore says he would like to increase raises for teachers more next year, in the second year of the budget adopted today.
BUT THE REAL AGENDA of legislative leaders appears elsewhere in the budget.
The budget will accelerate an already-scheduled reduction in the state’s personal income-tax rate from 4.75% this year to 4.5% in 2024 and 3.99% by 2026 – and possibly even lower – costing the state at least $800 million in revenue over two years.8
And the budget will expand eligibility for private-school vouchers called “Opportunity Scholarships” to students from any income level, even if they already attend a private school.
Over 10 years, the expansion will more than quintuple state funds for vouchers from $95 million last year to $415 million by 2025-26 and $520 million by 2032-33. As much as $1 million of those tax dollars can be spent on marketing – “outreach and scholarship education and application assistance” for parents and students.9
“We could double our teacher raises with the money we are spending on private school vouchers,” said Rep. Brandon Lofton, D-Mecklenburg.10
LEGISLATORS DID SET one good example of how to treat teachers, however.
During the coronavirus pandemic, the entire nation encountered a severe shortage of nurses, who worked in horrible conditions, yet rose to the occasion. North Carolina is projected to fall well short of the number of nurses it needs in the next 10 years11 – in large part due a shortage of instructors, who can simply make more working as nurses than they can teaching people how to nurse.12
Though it took three years, legislators finally appeared to hear the demand for instructors. So at both community colleges and state universities, the new budget provides an increase of 10% in starting pay and raises of as much as 15% for other nursing instructors.13
Legislators would be wise to follow their own example with other teachers.
1 https://www.wral.com/story/state-workers-to-get-7-raises-tax-cuts-to-be-sped-up-under-new-nc-budget/21057649/.
2 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article278765479.html.
3 https://www.al.com/educationlab/2022/04/alabama-gov-kay-ivey-approves-largest-education-budget-in-state-history-historic-teacher-raises.html.
4 https://webservices.ncleg.gov/ViewNewsFile/81/CommitteeReport_2023_09_20_Final, p. 48/B21.
5 https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/11/north-carolina-is-americas-top-state-for-business-for-second-year-running-according-to-cnbc-exclusive-study.html.
6 https://webservices.ncleg.gov/ViewNewsFile/81/CommitteeReport_2023_09_20_Final, p. 7/A1.
7 https://hew.aveltsagency.com/2023/08/why-do-we-let-our-general-assembly-dismantle-public-education/.
8 https://webservices.ncleg.gov/ViewNewsFile/80/H259-CCSMHxr-6%20v17, p. 613.
9 https://webservices.ncleg.gov/ViewNewsFile/80/H259-CCSMHxr-6%20v17, pp. 187-197.
10 https://www.wral.com/story/brandon-lofton-state-budget-without-public-input-or-meaningful-negotiation/21060971/.
11 https://hew.aveltsagency.com/2021/07/help-wanted-nurses/.
12 https://hew.aveltsagency.com/2021/07/the-nursing-faculty-bottleneck/.
13 https://webservices.ncleg.gov/ViewNewsFile/81/CommitteeReport_2023_09_20_Final, pp. 33/B6, 68/B41.
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