Public school group wants NC lawmakers to give teachers a 24.5% raise in salary

A public education advocacy group is urging North Carolina lawmakers to raise salaries for teachers by 24.5% and to follow a court-ordered plan to increase funding for public schools.

The Public School Forum of North Carolina put ensuring “fair and competitive compensation for educators” as the top item Tuesday on its list of education priorities for the 2023-24 session of the General Assembly. The forum says state lawmakers need to raise teacher salaries to the national average and ensure educators are paid as well as people in other fields who have a similar education.

“These recommendations may sound bold, but the salary increases that we’re calling for are not extravagant and we need to remember this,” Lauren Fox, the forum’s senior director for policy and research, said at Tuesday’s breakfast meeting at N.C. State University’s McKimmon Center in Raleigh.

“We’re talking about making teacher pay comparable to other fields and reaching the national average.

The 24.5% proposed pay raise is likely to be met by skepticism from GOP lawmakers who say school districts should use their federal COVID dollars to address more of their needs.

“We must disabuse ourselves of the notion that more money alone buys positive outcomes for our students,” Senate leader Phil Berger said during the opening of the legislative session on Jan. 11. “Success in education policy is about more than hitting some arbitrary funding goal.”

Sen. Michael Lee, the co-chair of the Senate Education Committee said at the forum’s meeting that the state hasn’t raised teacher salaries as much as he would have liked. But the New Hanover County Republican said “where we’re having an issue really is on the local level.”

‘Teacher pay penalty’

The state pays the base salaries for teachers as well as a a salary supplement in most of the state’s counties. Some school districts also supplement teacher salaries with local dollars.

The state’s public schools opened this school year with more than 4,400 teaching vacancies.

North Carolina ranks 38th in the nation in teacher pay with an average salary of $53,4581 last school year. The forum also notes that the state’s beginning teacher salary of $37,000 falls 17% below Alabaman and below the state’s minimum living wage of $48,346.

Adjusting for inflation, the forum says the average teacher salary in North Carolina dropped 11.5% from 1999-2000 to 2020-2021. The group says the national average salary increased by 3% over that time period.

Also, the group says North Carolina teachers suffer a pay penalty because they make approximately 24.5% less than similarly educated peers in other sectors.

“Education was supposed to be my gateway out of poverty,” Eugenia Floyd, the 2021 North Carolina Teacher of the Year, said at Tuesday’s meeting. “But I’m one devastating event away from poverty and that’s a reality not just for me, but that’s a reality for many educators all across the state.”

The forum suggests five policy steps:

▪ Increase state-funded base pay for teachers by 24.5% to reach the national average and eliminate the teacher pay penalty. This would raise the starting salary for teachers to more than $46,000 a year.

▪ Compensate teachers for additional duties and workload.

▪ Reinstate masters pay for teachers.

▪ Provide funding to pay student teachers.

▪ Revise the principal pay plan to ensure that compensation is stable and predictable.

“If we really want to make a difference in compensation, increase the base pay to a minimum of $70,000 per year,” Union County Superintendent Andrew Houlihan said at the forum’s meeting.

Houlihan also came out against the state proposal to base teacher salaries on performance pay, saying it should only be used for bonuses and not in base salaries.

Fund Leandro plan

The forum’s four other education priorities were:

▪ Address the root causes of mental health and school safety crises.

▪ Grow, retain and diversify the teacher pipeline

▪ Prepare students for the world they live in.

▪ Implement, monitor, and evaluate the Comprehensive Remedial Plan. It’s a plan developed by an education consultant in the Leandro school funding case to try to provide every student with access to high quality teachers and principals.

In November, the state Supreme Court ruled that the courts could order the state fund years two and three of the Leandro plan. But the plan is in flux after Republicans won a majority on the high court on Election Day.

The forum said fully funding the Leandro plan is foundational to all the education priorities it listed Tuesday.

Gun control measures

The forum has a wide range of policy steps it recommends to try to address those priorities, including:

▪ Hire additional counselors, social workers, psychologists and nurses to increase student access to school-based mental health services.

▪ Reinstate the federal ban on assault weapons and require universal background checks for gun purchases in all 50 states.

▪ Open the North Carolina Teaching Fellows program to prospective teachers in all subject areas and structure financial support as scholarships, rather than forgivable loans.

▪ Replace A-F school grades with an accountability model with multiple measures that emphasizes growth, equity, and critical thinking and problem-solving skills. This would apply to the grades the state gives to each school and not individual student grades.