RALEIGH (April 25, 2024) – The NC General Assembly is back this week for its so-called “short” session to make adjustments for the second year of the state budget.

And boy, are there plenty of “adjustments” to make…

The legislature’s analysts project a $1.4 billion revenue surplus for the 2024-25 budget year. But with federal Covid-relief dollars scheduled to expire for school systems and child-care providers across the state, many are desperate for relief.

Here are some of the “adjustments” the legislature needs to make – now:

• Bigger raises for teachers and support staff – including bus drivers.

New data show more than 10,000, or 11.5%, of the state’s teachers left their jobs in 2022-23, compared with 7.8% the year before. It was easily the largest number of teachers to leave the profession in at least two decades.¹ And the attrition rate was highest among beginning teachers, at 15%.

“North Carolina’s teachers are leaving in droves,” said one headline.²

“NC teacher turnover hits highest mark in decades,” said another.³

North Carolina now ranks 49th out of 50 states in the portion of its economy it devotes to K-12 public education.⁴ Though the state has ranked No. 1 in the nation for business the past two years, average teacher salaries in K-12 public schools ranked 34th last year, and the state’s beginning teacher salaries ranked an embarrassing 46th.⁵

Those two rankings are simply not sustainable.

One doesn’t happen without the other. Employers – in an increasingly technological world – want skilled, trained workers. But we won’t continue to produce those workers if the state’s best and brightest veer away from teaching – or if we can’t even hire enough bus drivers to get kids to school.

What don’t our “leaders” get?

Even a state House committee concluded last month that pay for K-12 public school teachers in North Carolina hasn’t kept pace with inflation. Now there’s an epiphany.⁶ But will it lead to anything? Or is it just election-year pandering?

North Carolina’s public schools opened the current school year with more than 3,500 teacher vacancies and an increasing reliance on non-certified teachers.⁷

“I love my job and I want to stay in it,” Wake County teacher Rachel Chen said in our first Teachers Talk video. “But love isn’t going to keep me in the classroom. Policy changes are.”

A poll this month for Public Ed Works found that:

• 65% of NC registered voters think public K-12 schools are underfunded; and
• 78% of NC voters say K-12 public school teachers should be paid more than the 3% raise they are currently scheduled to receive in 2024-25.⁸

Voters want to see it – and they want to see it in an election year.

Gov. Roy Cooper called yesterday for an 8.5% pay raise and a $1,500 retention bonus for teachers in the coming year. Cooper said he also wants to restore master’s degree pay for teachers.

Legislators “can choose desperately needed investments to educate our children and our workforce, along with tax cuts for the middle class and small businesses. Or they can choose tax giveaways for corporations and the wealthy and keep robbing taxpayer money from the public schools to fund private school vouchers,” Cooper said.⁹

Again, what don’t our other “leaders” get?

Or do they feel insulated from voters in their gerrymandered, judicially guaranteed districts?

As Cooper mentioned, legislators adopted a plan last year to expand use of taxpayer-funded vouchers for students to attend public schools – with no limits on family income – by $5 billion, to $520 million a year by 2032-33.

State Rep. Brandon Lofton, D-Mecklenburg, calculated last year that legislators could have doubled raises for public school teachers with the money they spent on vouchers.¹⁰

But House Speaker Tim Moore says the legislature should provide yet another $300 million for vouchers next year to meet demand.¹¹

The Public School Forum of North Carolina computed that the $300 million Moore would put into more taxpayer-funded vouchers for students in private schools could otherwise provide an additional 4% raise for K-12 public school teachers.¹²

And even though a judge determined last year that the state owes public schools $678 million to meet the standards in the 30-year-old Leandro case, the state Supreme Court is widely expected to block any court-ordered expenditures in the case that haven’t been approved by the General Assembly.

School systems across the state, meanwhile, are begging county commissioners to step in and fill a gap in federal Covid-relief dollars that will disappear in September.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg will ask for $63.5 million.¹³ Wake County will ask for an additional $58 million.¹⁴ Guilford County’s superintendent is asking cities and towns to kick in.¹⁵ Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools will ask for an additional $20 million.¹⁶

And what about the state’s rural school districts?

Good luck with that.

• Critical help for NC childcare.

This is about nurturing children in the most precious, formative years of their lives. But it’s also a workforce issue – employees with young children can’t be dependable workers unless they have quality childcare.

A survey by the NC Child Care Resource and Referral Council found that nearly 3 in 10 child care providers in the state – more than 1,500 providers that provide care for more than 91,000 children – could close unless the state steps in to replace federal pandemic money that helped raise pay for teachers by $2-3/hour.

Some 88% of the centers that responded said they have already raised tuition, and 29% said they might close. Advocates want $300 million to maintain wage supports provided by the federal dollars.

State early-education director Ariel Ford told legislators this month that the average pay for preschool teachers is $14 an hour – less than they could make in retail jobs.¹⁷

“Classroom teachers are leaving due to low compensation, waiting lists for child care are growing, parents can’t afford to pay more, and employers can’t afford to have more people sitting out of the employment market,” said Janet Singerman, CEO of nonprofit Child Care Resources Inc. in Charlotte.

“The State’s child care teachers, program operators, parents, and employers need this lifeline.”¹⁸

The NC Chamber is said to be making child care support a top priority in this year’s short session. And a group of powerful CEOs, including Jim Goodnight of SAS, continues to push for expansion of the NC Pre-K program for 4-year-olds.

• $21.5 million for heat for HBCU students.

The UNC System refers to this as “critical HBCU infrastructure.”¹⁹

What we’re talking about is heat for students who pay for room and board at our public universities: A simple human decency. Critical repairs or replacements – boilers, generators or steam systems – at Elizabeth City State, N.C. A&T, NC Central and Winston-Salem State universities.

The governor and an astronaut who will orbit the moon next year visited N.C. A&T on Tuesday talking up STEM fields. Yet in January, 34 buildings at A&T lost heat and hot water. Some 1,800 students were displaced from their dorm rooms. Two days of classes were canceled, and a third day was held online.

Should those students have to worry about heat in their dorm rooms? Or warm showers?

“Is this any way to run the nation’s largest HBCU?” asked the Greensboro News & Record.²⁰

That’s unconscionable in the 21st century. Step up, General Assembly. Much as you might like it, we’re no longer in the 1950s.

• $15 million for raises in hard-to-fill UNC positions.

In recent years, the UNC System has only asked for raises equivalent to those given other state employees. But campus chancellors from UNC Pembroke to NC State and UNC-Chapel Hill have increasingly warned about losses of faculty and critical support staff due to the meager raises given state employees. The System seeks $15 million in “labor market salary adjustments” to recruit and retain employees in hard-to-fill positions.

As with K-12 teachers, the UNC System says state raises haven’t kept pace with inflation: An employee who made $70,000 in 2018-19 would make $77,695 in 2023-24 after legislative raises. But due to inflation, that employee would need to make $85,769 this year to have the same purchasing power. So that employee has lost $8,074 in inflation-adjusted earnings.

We know that’s math, legislators, but it’s just that – math.

• $5 million to offset enrollment losses at UNC Pembroke and Winston-Salem State.

UNCP and WSSU are both projected to suffer funding losses next year due to enrollment declines under the UNC System’s funding formula. The System requests a measure to limit those losses, similar to what the legislature provided for UNC Greensboro and UNC Asheville last year.²¹

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¹ https://www.wral.com/story/nc-teacher-turnover-hits-highest-mark-in-decades-new-report-shows-changes-in-who-is-leading-classrooms/21361469/;
² https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article287290125.html.
³ https://www.wral.com/story/nc-teacher-turnover-hits-highest-mark-in-decades-new-report-shows-changes-in-who-is-leading-classrooms/21361469/.
⁴ https://www.epi.org/publication/teacher-pay-in-2022/#epi-toc-2.
⁵ https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article287063385.html.
⁶ https://publicedworks.org/2024/03/legislative-epiphany-teacher-pay-hasnt-kept-up/.
⁷ https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article278765479.html.
⁸ https://publicedworks.org/2024/04/nc-voters-pay-teachers-better/.
⁹ https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article287776985.html.
¹⁰ https://www.wral.com/story/brandon-lofton-state-budget-without-public-input-or-meaningful-negotiation/21060971/.
¹¹ https://www.wunc.org/politics/2024-04-10/nc-house-speaker-tim-moore-300-million-private-school-vouchers-all-income-levels.
¹² https://www.wral.com/story/mary-ann-wolf-n-c-legislators-will-soon-spend-1-billion-surplus-public-schools-must-be-a-priority/21396128/.
¹³ https://www.wfae.org/education/2024-04-16/the-latest-cms-budget-new-crew-new-tactics-old-tensions.
¹⁴ https://www.wral.com/story/higher-employee-pay-will-be-key-to-running-wake-schools-smoothly-superintendent-says/21387693/.
¹⁵ https://greensboro.com/news/local/education/in-a-first-with-tutoring-on-the-line-guilford-superintendent-recommends-asking-cities-and-towns/article_b9adc6ce-fc34-11ee-951a-c3815dfa48c2.html.
¹⁶ https://journalnow.com/news/local/education/school-board-expected-to-ask-county-for-additional-20-million-in-next-years-budget/article_2a80b11c-00b4-11ef-b608-5be5704ae9d0.html.
¹⁷ https://www.wral.com/story/nc-child-care-leader-warns-of-looming-financial-crisis/21359412/.
¹⁸ https://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/article287574445.html.
¹⁹ https://publicedworks.org/2024/04/unc-system-makes-modest-legislative-requests/.
²⁰ https://greensboro.com/opinion/editorial/our-opinion-unc-hbcus-deserve-utility-funds/article_8a3bf508-01bd-11ef-b06c-eb18190e0e30.html.
²¹ https://publicedworks.org/2024/04/unc-system-makes-modest-legislative-requests/.