By Tom Campbell

RALEIGH (November 14, 2024) – With the elections behind us, we need to shift our focus to North Carolina issues. Without question one of our highest priorities is helping our neighbors in Western North Carolina affected by Hurricane Helene.

But there’s another perfect storm brewing – in public education. It is widely acknowledged that the single most important function of state government is the education of the next generation. Further, we repeatedly hear that the teacher is the single most important person in the education process. But North Carolina isn’t treating our teachers like they are important.

We are fortunate to have elected Mo Green to be our incoming Superintendent of Public Instruction. Having served seven years as Superintendent of Guilford County Schools, Mo is experienced and highly capable of leading us in the coming storm.

Our legislature once again adjourned without addressing the glaring problems of funding public schools adequately and, more importantly, paying our teachers professional wages. Lawmakers are willing to throw bucketsful of money to private school vouchers but ignore public schools.

The State House appeared more willing to increase teacher pay, but our State Senate has dug in their respective heels, even dragging out the resolution of a state budget over the issue of paying our teachers more. We keep hearing that the Senate’s biggest antagonist to paying teachers more is Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger.

Berger (and some Republicans) have had a grudge against teachers going back to when the North Carolina Association of Educators had great clout in education policies. But both their membership and the political clout they had in education has waned dramatically. Still the Senate and Berger won’t budge.

They just have it in for public school teachers.

Consider the facts: North Carolina ranks 41st in average teacher pay in the US ($58,559), having declined from 38th in 2022-23. We rank next-to-the-last in the Southeast, even behind Mississippi and Alabama. And starting pay for our teachers ($41,000) is $7,000 lower than South Carolina.

If we don’t pay our teachers adequately they will either leave the classroom altogether or take teaching jobs in other states. More than 10,000 teachers – 11.5% of total teachers – left North Carolina classrooms last year and we started this school year with 3,000 teaching vacancies, forced to hire unlicensed teachers.

Just increasing teacher pay doesn’t automatically mean we will get better teachers, but it’s for darn sure we WON’T recruit and retain the best teachers if we don’t pay them well. Our teaching corps is poorly paid, teacher morale is declining; meanwhile our legislature refuses to fund public schools adequately.

College students are smart enough to know this. They aren’t choosing to major in education. Schools of education have experienced a 51 percent decline in enrollment in the past decade.

Not only are we not preparing a new cadre of teachers for our classrooms, but our current teaching corps is aging and retiring.

Lawmakers appear to have hundreds of millions to give to private schools – schools over which we have little control and know less than is needed about education outcomes. How’s that going to work out for us?

Let’s consider vouchers for a moment. Started originally with the guise of giving “opportunity scholarships” to lower income families, there are now no income restrictions on who can get a voucher.

The average private school tuition is $10,442 per year. The maximum voucher amount is $7,468. That voucher won’t pay the total tuition, meaning a large number of the vouchers are given to children in middle- and upper-income families. Further, most private schools are operated by religious groups that require religious instruction in whatever religion they espouse.

Lower socioeconomic families will have no choice but for their children to attend public schools, schools that are increasingly being denied necessary funding or the best teachers. Under the “put your money where your mouth is” axiom, North Carolina’s legislators are saying they are willing to throw away the futures of a large segment of our population in favor or giving entitlements and advantages to the wealthy.

We’ve seen this movie before. In 1994, five school districts sued the state saying the revenues from the state were insufficient to provide an equal education for its students compared to wealthier districts. Our Supreme Court agreed, mandating that every child has a right to access to a sound basic education.

The legislature made strides to level the playing field in years after the Leandro decision, but there’s little pretense even made today. Our legislature is clearly violating its duty to parents and children. And now that Republicans have a solid majority of justices on our Supreme Court, we can’t even count on them affirming Leandro.

Nothing is going to change unless or until a sufficient number of citizens rise up and demand change from our legislature. It is time to unite and speak out.

Tom Campbell is a Hall of Fame North Carolina broadcaster and columnist who has covered North Carolina public policy issues since 1965.  Contact him at [email protected]