The recently announced framework for a new state budget includes what House Speaker Destin Hall called the “largest average teacher pay increase at least since 2006.”
On average, teachers’ base pay would go up by 8%, Hall and Senate leader Phil Berger said during a press conference last week. But the number of years of experience each teacher has would strongly influence the size of their raise if this plan passes into law.
Under the current state salary schedule, teachers do not receive any increases in their base pay between their 15th and 24th years in the classroom. They may, however, receive some bumps through the local pay supplements that vary district to district. In either case, rising health insurance premiums have eaten into their paychecks. Many teachers made less this year than the one before.
“This is the moment veteran teachers know they’re going to get screwed over once again,” David Dobrich, a Charlotte-area teacher, wrote on Facebook Tuesday night after Hall and Berger announced the outlines of a deal but before more details came out. Dobrich highlighted a paragraph in which Hall said that experienced teachers would get a raise, but gave no specifics.
The proposed salary schedule released later in the week confirmed veteran teachers’ fears that they would receive a significantly smaller boost than newcomers would. The decade-long pay plateau remains in place under the new framework. And while beginning teachers were slated to receive base pay that was about 17% higher, teachers with 14 to 23 years of experience would see much less of an increase—5.5%—further compressing the salary range.
Under the proposal, beginning teachers would receive $4,800 a month in base pay. A teacher with 15-24 years of experience would receive $5,682 a month. And the maximum base pay under the plan, for teachers with 25 years of experience or more, is $5,900 a month. Teachers are paid 10 months of the year.
Guilford County teacher Katie Kindermann wrote on Facebook in summary: “So once again the state says ‘Thank you so much for your 15 years of service with our company. In honor of your dedication and commitment to your career, we would like to reward you by freezing your pay for the next 10 years. But don’t worry, after the 10 years is up, we are going to give you a very small token of our appreciation and then never give you a raise again.”
Toni Parkes, a Charlotte-area teacher, wrote on Facebook: “25 years experience and I only make $1100 more than a brand new teacher. Doesn’t seem quite right.”
The disappointment crossed party lines. When Monroe Mayor Robert Burns criticized the North Carolina Association of Educators, which slammed the plan, as “blinded by far-left activism” in the North Carolina Conservatives Facebook group on Thursday, several people identifying themselves as conservative teachers jumped in to disagree with his characterizations of the union and lawmakers’ proposal.
“I’m a conservative, who votes republican, and I’m a teacher—you’re not telling the whole truth,” Vincent Nuzzo wrote before going on to break down the numbers.
“No one’s being ungrateful,” he wrote in a follow-up comment. “Context matters: NC teacher pay is already 25% under national average, and this raise was supposed to come last year after decades of being underpaid.” (The most recently available national data ranks North Carolina’s average teacher pay near the bottom.)
“As a teacher I’m appalled with how our state pays teachers and how they give so little in benefits,” wrote Olga Lingo, a special education teacher with decades of experience, most recently in Lincoln County schools. “I’m a conservative but this is outrageous.”
The plan Berger and Hall announced doesn’t include retroactive pay raises, even though the legislature is months late in passing a budget. The plan did include a one-time bonus of $1,000 for teachers with more than 16 years of experience. Teachers with less experience would get a $500 bonus.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green said in a statement that “these pay raises would be a long-awaited step in the right direction.”
“I look forward to seeing the full budget, as I hope to see more investments in public education throughout its pages that will support our collective effort to build the best public education system in the nation by 2030.”