Raleigh, North Carolina — The North Carolina House is proposing a 4.4% increase in average teacher pay, restoring pay raises for those with master's degrees and spending hundreds of millions of dollars more on private school tuition.
Teachers currently make between $39,000 and $55,100 a year, based on the state base salary before local supplements. Starting salaries are set to rise to $41,000 next year, but under the House proposal released late Monday it would be $44,000, an increase of 12.8 percent over the current rate. Maximum salaries are set to rise to $55,595 next year, but under the House proposal it would be $56,510, an increase of 1.5 percent over the current rate.
The proposed $487 million for the state's private school voucher program, known as Opportunity Scholarships, and the related Individual Education Student Account Fund for Children with Disabilities would be significantly more than what's already budgeted for the program in 2024-25 and 2025-26. The House proposes spending an additional $175.6 million from the general fund for those two programs, plus $97 million from state lottery funds and $215.5 million from savings funds to provide vouchers to tens of thousands more students.
“Parents must be empowered to choose the best education for their family, regardless of income status, but school choice is not a zero-sum game,” House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, said in a news release announcing the budget proposal. “Therefore, the House budget increases starting teacher salaries to $44,000, restores master's degree-level pay for teachers, and ensures that every public school classroom is staffed with qualified teachers who are professionals and fairly compensated.”
The House of Representatives introduced its budget proposal on Monday after closed-door budget negotiations with the Senate failed. Senate leaders were leaning toward proposing lower spending, and the House said it wanted more than the Senate could afford. Any changes to the current budget would require the two chambers to reach an agreement.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has proposed raising teachers' average salaries by 8.5 percent and paying them $1,500 retention bonuses.
Cooper opposes expanding voucher access, arguing that private schools that receive the funds are not publicly accountable and that traditional public schools need more money to recruit and retain quality teachers.
If Republican legislative leaders pass a new budget and Cooper vetoes it over the voucher issue, a supermajority in the Legislature would have to override the veto. Republicans have veto-proof supermajorities in both houses and have overridden all of Cooper's vetoes so far this session.
Raising teacher salaries
Teacher salaries are set to rise by an average of 3% next year, but a big increase in starting salaries will push the average salary up even more.
The House is seeking to raise that to an average of 4.4 percent next year. The additional pay boost for teachers and instructional support would cost $99.8 million, according to the House fiscal report.
The budget proposal also opposes a 1% pay increase for non-certified employees such as principals, vice principals, other custodial staff and bus drivers, all of whom would receive 3% and the 1% increase would be in addition to that.
Teacher turnover in North Carolina hit its highest level in at least two decades last year, with 11.5% of the state's more than 90,000 public school teachers leaving the profession, up from 7.8% the year before.
The state has now declared shortages in nearly every field.
As of the start of this school year, more than 6 percent of all teaching positions in the state were still unfilled or filled by unqualified people, the highest percentage in several years.
The National Education Association's most recent rankings, released last month, place North Carolina in the bottom half of U.S. states when it comes to teacher pay and spending on public education.
Gradual pay increases for North Carolina teachers, approved in this year's state budget, have failed to reverse turnover.
Meanwhile, some local school boards are considering small pay raises, while others are not proposing anything at all. Many are also cutting staff retention and recruiting bonuses that were funded with temporary federal pandemic relief money that runs out by the next school year. Some have found new sources of funding to retain staff.
In many North Carolina counties, teacher salaries are not enough to live comfortably, and money is not as widely available as it once was. A person who enrolled as a teacher in 2008 was expected to earn a state base salary of $30,430 ($43,550 in today's value) and after 15 years, earn a state base salary of $41,760 ($59,765 in today's value). But in the current school year, a new teacher is earning a state base salary of $39,000, and a teacher with 15 years of experience is earning a state base salary of $53,600.
According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's living wage calculator, a married couple with two children living in Wake County needs to earn just under $61,000 a year each to live comfortably. But Wake County teachers don't earn that much until their 15th year, when most teachers are in their mid- to late 30s, even with Wake County benefits of more than $6,000. The state's base salary never reaches that amount, regardless of a teacher's tenure, and even those with 25 years of experience can earn about $55,000 a year.
Expanding tuition assistance for private schools
Of the voucher spending, $248 million will come in the 2024-25 school year, nearly doubling spending on the state's program that writes checks to families who want to send their children to private schools instead of public schools.
The increase for next fiscal year is on top of $293.5 million already allocated for next fiscal year from the Opportunity Scholarship Fund and two other sources, bringing the total allocation to $541.5 million.
The budget proposal also makes clear that non-North Carolina residents cannot apply unless they can prove they are moving to the state or transferring to a military base in North Carolina.
The voucher program, called “Opportunity Scholarships,” is expected to be underfunded by more than $200 million next year, leaving about 54,000 students without vouchers. Next year marks the first year that families of all incomes and those currently attending private schools are allowed to receive the vouchers, with about 72,000 new applicants to a program that already has more than 32,000 students enrolled. The vouchers cover at least $3,000 for families, unless the actual tuition cost is lower, and up to more than $7,000 for the lowest-income families.
The state spends more than $11 billion on public schools, and counties spend another $3 billion on public schools.
It's unclear how many of the 72,000 freshmen who applied for Opportunity Scholarships are already attending private schools because the state Education Aid Agency doesn't ask for that information when students apply.
About one-fifth of the applicants were families in the highest income bracket: a family of four earning more than $259,740 a year. About two-fifths were families in the lower income bracket: a family of four earning between $115,400 and $159,740 a year. But none of those families are scheduled to receive a voucher next year. Very few families in the second lowest income bracket (family of four earning between $57,720 and $115,440 a year) are scheduled to receive a voucher. All families in the lowest income bracket (family of four earning $57,720 a year) are scheduled to receive a voucher, and all families who already have a voucher are scheduled to receive one again.
The median income for a family of four in North Carolina in 2022 was about $105,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
