North Carolina teacher pay debate highlights growing cost of state benefits
(The Center Square) – North Carolina approved pay increases for teachers after two years without raises, but educators and policy analysts say lawmakers can do more.
The state’s current and next fiscal year budget gives teachers a 1.3% increase for each step of the salary schedule and an average 5% pay raise.
The North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) said the raises are not enough. Bob Luebke, a senior fellow at the John Locke Foundation’s Center for Effective Education, said the state should rethink benefit costs as a way to boost teacher salaries.
“State lawmakers provided a budget that did the bare minimum,” NCAE Board of Directors President Tamika Walker Kelly said after the state budget was signed into law providing for teachers’ raises. “Educators should feel disappointed.”
Teacher pay has been a point of contention for North Carolina lawmakers for some time. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the state’s previous biennium budget partially because the Republican-led Legislature did not propose a big enough pay increase for teachers.
Cooper told his teacher advisory committee he asked for a 10% raise for teachers in the current budget and higher pay for teacher assistants, school nurses, psychologists and counselors.
North Carolina state employee benefits as a percentage of average salary has increased from nearly 29% to about 50% over the past decade, according to Luebke’s research. The dollar value of retirement, health and social security benefits also have increased in the past 10 years, from $13,376 to $22,279.
The current state budget reflects the biggest increase in the state’s contribution to employee benefits over the past 10 years. North Carolina spent $3.4 billion on benefits for public school employees in 2021. The budget increases the state’s portion of health insurance by 11% and retirement by 1.09%. Luebke contends North Carolina could find more money for teacher salaries if lawmakers “learn to rein in the rising cost of employee benefits.”
NCAE Associate Executive Director Nicole Price said in a statement Friday that “educators are both professionals and essential employees that deserve higher pay and good benefits.”
The average teacher salary in North Carolina for the 2019-2020 school year was $54,150, according to the National Education Association (NEA), which ranked the Tar Heel State 42nd among other states and the District of Columbia. The ranking put the state three spots below where it was during the 2018-2019 school year, when North Carolina was 39th with an average teacher salary of $53,940.
“Competitive pay is crucial for attracting and retaining qualified educators for our students, throughout their academic journeys,” the NEA states on its website.
North Carolina ranked 11th for the number of instructors in public schools in the 2019-2020 school year, the NEA said. Based on the NEA’s annual report, more than 500 additional teachers were employed in the last school year.
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