After a more than year-long delay, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a state budget that includes pay raises for public school teachers. It’s the largest increase in first-year teacher pay in 50 years and the largest average increase for all teachers in at least 15, but the $34.3 billion appropriations package may not do enough for veteran teachers, according to educators.
North Carolina Association of Educators President Christina Cole joined 97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey to discuss the nuance of the teacher’s pay raise, as well as upcoming work of the NCAE. You can read that conversation, which has been lightly edited for clarity, below, or you can listen by clicking here.
Stuckey: What’s your initial take on the education aspect of this budget?
Cole: Too little, too late. You know, lawmakers are saying this is a pay raise for teachers, but when it’s been over three years since we’ve had a budget — as well as non-adjusting for inflation and the increased cost of living — this certainly does not feel like a raise to educators, and in particular to our veteran educators in years 14 through 25 where the step increases are flat. So this certainly doesn’t feel like a budget that does what’s necessary for public school staff and students.
Stuckey: Talk more about the effects on veteran educators. When you say the step increase is flat, what does that mean exactly?
Cole: Between those years, those educators don’t see a significant raise in salary based on their years of experience. And those are the educators who have put in time and labor and hope to see retirement soon who aren’t getting raises for those years of experience. And that’s where we start to see attrition of veteran educators, people leaving the profession. So it’s definitely detrimental to not be paying our veteran educators their worth.
Stuckey: I spent 15 years as a classroom teacher in public schools and that’s kind of the bracket group of educators that a lot of the school leadership comes from as well, within departments and different areas. So that’s kind of a compounding problem, it feels like.
Cole: You are absolutely right. Those are certainly the educators who are mentoring other educators. They’re often in school leadership or administrative positions, and they’re often taking on more work and more responsibility in our schools. So they absolutely deserve raises that, like I said, keep up with the cost of living so they’re able to take care of their own families and put food on the table. I hear that a lot from educators’ stories all the time that I have a second and third job, and we say one job should be enough as a professional with 10, 20 years experience, right? We shouldn’t have talked to an educator in Forsyth [County whose] second job is bartending at Chili’s. And she teaches AP classes and had incredible growth with her AP students, but spends her nights and weekends at Chili’s in order to make ends meet. I think that’s kind of ridiculous here in North Carolina. We should just pay those educators for their professional expertise and what they do with our kids every day.
Stuckey: Absolutely. And I would also go so far as to say as a former educator that there [are] always things that you want to be doing as an educator that you can’t do. A teacher who’s taking a second and third job would rather be spending that time and mental energy on their students and on increasing the ability of the school to serve the students. So it’s, again, a situation where if we’re paid, it’s not just about paying the teachers, it’s about lifting up the entire system when you are able to pay the teachers.
Is there anything else you’re hearing from members of the association about specifics in this budget?
Cole: I would say the number one thing is educator pay. And if we sort of reframe that, what’s not in this budget is an increase in per pupil spending. North Carolina’s one of the worst states in the Southeast, even in the country on per pupil spending, which means more resources for students, lower class sizes because we have more educators or paraprofessionals like instructional assistants supporting students with differentiating instruction and meeting their needs. So what we would also like to see is just an increase in per pupil spending. And what we say at NCAE through our ‘Kids Over Corporations’ campaign is ending private school vouchers. That’s millions, billions of dollars going into unaccountable private schools that could be going into our public schools to increase per pupil spending and pay our educators, especially our veterans. So we would certainly like to see an end to the privatization scheme, and we know the corporate tax rate is going to zero by 2030. And to your point, that impacts all social services, but in particular, our public schools, which are at the heart of our communities.
‘Kids Over Corporations’ rally in Raleigh on May 1. (Image via Ayven Hard/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
Stuckey: Stepping outside of the budget specifically, what’s next on the horizon for the association as we get deeper into summer here?
Cole: I’m sure a lot of your listeners and folks all across North Carolina saw us on May Day filling Halifax Mall with tens of thousands of educators and public school supporters. And we’ve continued that movement through the summer where we have multiple canvassing programs where members are knocking doors of public school workers to ask them to join our movement. We’ve got members knocking on the doors of community allies and voters to talk about the importance of electing pro-union, pro-public school candidates as we approach the midterms in November. And of course, when we get back into our schools in the fall, we’re going to continue to grow the union and build the movement we need to elect and unelect people who are either going to support public schools or not. So we have a plan to continue the movement this summer. We often hear educators only work 10 months. That’s not true. We’re doing a lot of work to build the movement and to prepare to go back into our schools and do what we do every day with our students.
Stuckey: We’re kind of talking big picture budget things, but the union does a lot more than just negotiating pay. When we talk about what happens on a day-to-day basis, particularly as we get into the fall and school starts up again, tell me some things that you’re proud of in the work that you’re doing.
Cole: We are absolutely proud of the growth we’ve made as an organization. NCAE is one of the fastest growing state affiliates in NEA, our National Education Association. [I’m] really proud of the canvassing programs we’re doing, which is a historical tradition that we often don’t talk about: home visits and visiting your neighbors and people in your community, and talking about what’s important to you. We have member teams all across the state as they prepare to go back into schools to identify issues that matter to them and their coworkers. Wake County just saw some school facility issues because of the heat, so some locals might take up a campaign like that to improve school facilities because we haven’t seen a school construction bond in a long, long time in North Carolina.
So lots of locals are thinking about that. We have locals trying to raise pay for our classified staff, or our educational support professionals, our transportation workers, our cafeteria staff, some of the lowest wage workers in our public school system. So running campaigns that raise the hourly wage or brings bonuses or supplemental pay to that set of workers in schools. So [I’m] most proud of all the work members and public school workers do not only with our kids every day from bell-to-bell, but after school, in the evenings, on the weekends to really improve learning conditions for students. We are certainly proud of that work.
Schools [are] at the heart of our communities, and [we] encourage listeners to connect [with] the educators and public school workers in their communities and have conversations with us about what it’s gonna take to get a General Assembly that fully funds our schools with elected officials who are going to be champions for our students and put kids over corporations.
Featured image via Ayven Hard/Chapel Hill Media Group.
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‘Too Little, Too Late’: NCAE President Talks Teacher Pay Raises in State Budget Chapelboro.com.
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