Republicans are offering NC teachers a ‘bonus’ that tells how much they value teachers.
North Carolina’s Republican lawmakers have presented the state’s teachers with a measure of their appreciation.
It’s a $350 bonus, before taxes.
That’s what the Senate majority approved Monday night and the House passed on Wednesday. Most Democrats rightly dismissed the bonus as paltry and the North Carolina Association of Educators called it an “egregious” display of disrespect.
Teachers received no raise this year because a deadlock over teacher pay and Medicaid expansion has blocked the adoption of a new state budget. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s budget proposed raising teacher pay by an average of 9.1 percent over two years. The Republicans wanted 3.9 percent over the same period.
Meanwhile, teachers saw their schools abruptly shut down in mid-March to slow the spread of COVID-19. They had to scramble to complete the school year with online instruction, and it’s still unclear if and how schools will reopen in August.
After all that, teachers deserve a boost. Instead, the Senate Bill 818 offers a bonus that won’t cover what most teachers spend out of pocket on school supplies. The House failed to make the bonus meaningful. The governor likely would veto this token offer by Republicans in an election year if it stood alone. Unfortunately, the bill also contains funding for regular step raises for some teachers, which will complicate Cooper’s decision.
The meagerness of the Senate proposal is not a surprise. Republican lawmakers are reluctant to give teachers the kind of boost that would put their compensation ahead of inflation. They’re stingy about increasing pay for non-teacher school personnel too. Investing in education is just not as satisfying as passing tax cuts and you can’t really do both.
This has become a tiresome issue. The Republicans didn’t want to truly lift public education even when the economy was booming. They’re surely not interested with the COVID-19 pandemic taking a big bite out of state tax revenues.
Fortunately, there’s an election coming and with it hope for a new Democratic-led legislature committed to the idea that the best money the state can spend is on educating children.
As Republicans, and some Democrats, raised their hands to give teachers a feeble bonus, several House Democrats pushed bills this week that call for the state to live up to its constitutional obligation to provide every North Carolina child with a sound, basic education.
The Democratic bills won’t go anywhere in this legislature. But they do provide a vision of what the future could be with political leadership committed to responding to the Leandro court decision that found public schools in North Carolina unequal in their funding and, in many cases, inadequate in their instruction.
The first of the two bills, House Bill 1129, would increase pay for highly effective teachers so they could afford to stay in the classroom rather than have to move into administration for better pay. It seeks ways to increase the diversity of teachers, it changes the A to F school grading system that stigmatizes schools serving children from low-income families, and it would end state vouchers for private school tuition.
The second bill, House Bill 1130, would pour money into early childhood education and restore the Teaching Fellows Program that the legislature foolishly ended in 2011.
Rep. Julie von Haefen, a chief sponsor of HB 1130, said it’s time for North Carolina to take up the work the Leandro ruling has put before the state.
“We have an obligation to invest in our teachers with long-term solutions, not one-time bonuses,” she said.
That’s true, but it won’t change until the General Assembly does. Fortunately thoughtful and responsible lawmakers are already mapping the path that change should take.