RALEIGH (October 31, 2024) – North Carolina’s public schools are hurting. But you can make a difference when you vote in the coming days.
Here are factors to keep in mind as you vote – particularly for state legislators, but also in races for governor, state superintendent, county commissioner, school board and local sales-tax referenda:
• Average teacher pay in North Carolina slid from 36th among the states to 38th in 2022-23, at $56,559. For 2023-24, North Carolina average teacher pay is projected to rank 41st, at $58,559 – next-to-last in the Southeast. And yes, behind both Mississippi and Alabama.1
• More than 10,000 teachers (11.5% of the total) left North Carolina classrooms last year. The result is the state started the school year with 3,000 vacant teaching positions, and it continued to hire an increasing percentage of unlicensed teachers.2
• Despite raises that haven’t nearly kept pace with inflation in recent years, state legislators approved no additional raises for teachers beyond the 3% raises they approved last year – despite a budget surplus of more than $1 billion.3
• North Carolina has seen a 51% decline in enrollment in its educator preparation programs over the past decade.4 Think that might have something to do with the above?
• Teachers aren’t the only staff affected. Schools across the state have seen shortages of bus drivers5 – with some students resorting to Uber to get to school, and teachers being forced to repeat lessons when a bus arrives late.
• Similarly, nearly half the HVAC technician positions in Wake County – the state’s largest school system – are vacant. The resulting delays in repairs to air-conditioning systems that break down in the sweltering early days of the school year mean students get sent home early.6 That can’t help students recover from the learning losses they experienced during the pandemic.
• Legislators took an audacious step last year when they removed income limits on vouchers for students to receive taxpayer dollars to attend private schools. Then in September, they voted to pump an additional $463 million into private-school vouchers, expanding to $825 million a year by 2032-33 – a total of $4 billion in taxpayer dollars for private schools over a decade.7
• Gov. Roy Cooper rightly vetoed the bill, noting the amount it would devote to private schools could instead give public school teachers an 8½% raise.
• Private schools are concentrated in urban areas and will siphon money from rural public schools, Cooper said. Rural Republicans in Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio and Texas have pushed back against vouchers.8 What so-called “choice” do rural parents have as their tax dollars flow to metro private schools?
• Republican legislators – who for now hold a veto-proof majority in both chambers of the legislature – could still override Cooper’s veto. But public dollars belong in public schools. More than 80% of North Carolina’s children still attend public schools. They are the key both to our economic future and to individual opportunity.
• Given $53 billion in damage to Western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene,9 is this any time to send $4 billion in taxpayer dollars to private schools?
• During the pandemic, North Carolina school systems used $1.2 billion in federal stimulus dollars to award teachers recruitment and retention bonuses. But those dollars dried up at the end of September.10
• North Carolina ranks an embarrassing 49th in the percentage of its economy it devotes to K-12 public education.11 It can’t sustain a No. 1 ranking in business – or even No. 2 – if it doesn’t invest more in its workforce.
• The General Assembly – under both Democrats and Republicans – has resisted rulings by the NC Supreme Count since 1997 in the Leandro case that would increase state funds for public schools by hundreds of millions of dollars a year.12
• Though the NC Constitution mandates “a general and uniform system of free public schools,”13 some counties have stepped in to provide additional support for local teachers and public education. But can every county do that?
• Voters in Guilford County will vote on a quarter-cent increase in the county sales tax to support teacher and school support staff salaries. Guilford voters have rejected that proposal six times.14
• As Public Schools First points out in the post below, if you’re upset about increases in local taxes for schools, you should speak to your state legislators for shirking their responsibilities.
So as you vote, keep the critical needs of our public schools in mind.
And hold candidates accountable.
1 https://www.nea.org/resource-library/educator-pay-and-student-spending-how-does-your-state-rank/teacher; https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article288227865.html.
2 https://www.wral.com/story/nc-teacher-turnover-hits-highest-mark-in-decades-new-report-shows-changes-in-who-is-leading-classrooms/21361469/.
3 https://publicedworks.org/2024/09/legislators-can-finish-the-job/.
4 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article292374609.html.
5 https://www.wral.com/news/local/durham-schools-bus-driver-shortage-october-2024/.
6 https://www.wral.com/story/half-of-wake-schools-hvac-jobs-are-vacant-ahead-of-upcoming-heat-wave/21597720/; https://www.wral.com/story/two-raleigh-schools-dismiss-early-wednesday-due-to-air-conditioning-problems/21599216/; https://www.wral.com/story/wake-schools-list-200m-in-hvac-needs-as-school-board-weighs-how-to-fix-them/21640709/.
7 https://publicedworks.org/2024/10/uphold-the-voucher-veto/.
8 https://www.propublica.org/article/rural-republicans-school-vouchers-education-choice.
9 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article294412199.html.
10 https://www.wral.com/story/federal-funds-gave-nc-school-employees-more-than-1b-in-bonuses-now-the-money-s-gone/21690071/.
11 https://edlawcenter.org/research/making-the-grade-2023/.
12 https://publicedworks.org/2024/02/leandro-remember-the-children/.
13 https://publicedworks.org/2024/09/legislators-can-finish-the-job/, Article IX, Section 2. See also Article I, Section 15.
14 https://greensboro.com/news/local/government-politics/elections/guilford-county/article_98a4cb12-83fc-11ef-bb54-0ff4f618311f.html; https://greensboro.com/opinion/editorial/our-opinion-pass-the-sales-tax/article_748be1bc-9238-11ef-aaa7-834a53c52c71.html.
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