Wake approves pay increases for some school employees, while some say they're not enough

Extra pay will soon be coming to most Wake County Public School System employees, some of it permanent.

The Wake County Board of Education approved Tuesday a $1,250 bonus for all full-time employees, a smaller bonus for part-time employees, a pay increase to $13 per hour for roughly 1,600 employees and a 1% local supplement salary increase for educators.

The proposal was supported by all board members, with hesitation related only to wanting to offer more compensation.

It wasn’t enough for many educators at Tuesday’s board meeting, either.

A crowd of educators outside and inside of the meeting called for fairer compensation while an employee shortage has created extra work for countless educators who are having to fill in for other classes. They spoke to applause from fellow North Carolina Association of Educators members and those in the audience who attended to speak on other issues.

Aubrey DiOrio, first grade teacher at York Elementary Schools, said teachers are losing planning periods, instructional assistants are filling for empty classrooms and specials classes are being canceled at elementary schools that don’t have the staff to hold the classes.

People have quit, she said, but “a lot of us are still here waiting to feel valued.”

Teachers are “exhausted,” she said.

“We cannot continue to work uncompensated any longer,” DiOrio said, followed by a standing ovation.

The Wake County chapter of NCAE has argued for $2,000 in hazard pay, a pay increase for all employees and compensation for extra work, such as filling in for classes when substitutes aren’t available.

Who earns less than $13 per hour?

Thousands of school district employees work positions in which the starting pay — and pay for the first several years — falls below $13 per hour.

Those positions are largely clerical, in food service, couriers, drivers and custodians — positions that would have some or significant interaction with students.

Only one position is a classroom position — instructional assistants. Instructional assistants often work in general education classes alongside special education students.

Wages for the positions that will see an increase currently start at $11.11 per hour, $11.58 per hour, $11.80 per hour and $12.44 per hour. Those employees have to work several years — counted by total months of employment rather than the number of school years worker — before they would be eligible for $13 per hour.

For each of those jobs, there’s a five-year period starting in the 6th year through the 10th year in which employees earn no pay increases at all. They have to work 10 years before they’re eligible for their next raise.

Bus drivers — many of whom have been protesting their working conditions in “sick outs” the last two days — already earn $15 per hour starting out. They are full-time employees and would be included among those receiving the $1,250 bonus. Bus drivers have been doubling up on routes and working longer hours than they were during a typical school year, when the district had more drivers.

Substitute teachers are not included among any of the proposals, but Wake County Public School System told the school board Tuesday they planned to have a proposal to help substitute teachers for the board to approve in December.

School board members favored increasing employees’ pay. They’ve been asking for more pay, particularly for the district’s lowest paid employees, for years.

Board Member Karen Carter, who worked for nine years as an instructional assistant in the district, said she was worried the proposal approved Tuesday didn’t go far enough. She said many non-educators earning low wages above $13 per hour would be left out of all measures but the bonus.

“I am glad to hear this is just the first step,” Carter said.

But a wage increase for other earners is long overdue, years after the board approved a five-year plan to raise wages, she said.

“I am not happy,” Carter said.

Wages have increased by only $0.52 per hour for some positions since the 2008-09 school year, she said.

“To me this is unacceptable,” Carter said.

Two years of that plan has now overlapped with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, stunting progress, Superintendent Cathy Q. Moore said.

The minimum wage increase further doesn’t address “step compression” — the shrinking range of wages between workers with relatively little experience and workers with several more years of experience.

If an employee with several years of experience earns $13.61, for example, their wage wouldn’t increase while the wages of those with years less of experience would inch closer to their same pay.

Roughly 3,500 district employees earn less than $15 per hour, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources A.J. Muttillo said. That means about 1,900 employees earn not much more than $13 per hour.

How much is $13 per hour?

For every dollar increase in wages, a 10-month employee working 40 hours each week would earn about $1,800 more per year. Many may work less than 40 hours per week.

A wage of $13 per hour would provide a 10-month employee with about $22,900 in pre-tax earnings.

Wages haven’t increased at the rate of inflation, educators and school staff argue.

The cost of living in Wake County has risen as growth has exploded.

Currently, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator calls a “living wage” for an adult without children to be $16.32 per hour in Wake County. In a two-adult household with three children, in which both adults work, a “living wage” would be $28.67 per hour for each adult.

Beyond sharp housing price increases in the area, child care costs for working parents have also risen.

The Economic Policy Institute reports the average annual cost of infant care in the state is $9,480 — more than the cost of a year of in-state, four-year college tuition.

“Board Chairman Keith Sutton noted that the state is legally responsible for paying for education. The county can provide salary supplements but is legally only required to fund facilities.

Sutton said he’d prefer a meaningful increase to base pay, but “we’ve got to have the state to do that.”

He acknowledged that some people said Tuesday’s measures didn’t go far enough, but he argued that moving forward with them without the state “is a bold move on our part.”

Where the money is coming from

The school district is using $25.8 million of its fund balance for the bonuses. Officials plan three or four more bonuses in 2022, paid for using federal coronavirus relief funds.

The increase in wages and salaries will be retroactive to July of this year.

Bonuses will be paid next month, and the wage increase will begin showing up in December paychecks.

The money for the wage increase will come from $10 million in funds included in the district’s budget for this year to increase these employees’ wages.

The district had already approved the 1% local supplement salary increase for educators as a part of its budget this spring, costing $1.4 million. The increase is to the local contribution to their salary only, not to their overall salary, which is mostly funded by the state.

Typically, Moore said the district waits until a state budget, supplying about 60% of district funds, has been approved to bring compensation changes. As a budget awaits, Moore said the district would move forward.

The $13 per hour minimum wage is part of both the North Carolina House and Senate’s budget proposals this year.

If approved, the district would explore using state funds to offset local costs.

But Board Member Jim Martin said Tuesday that he’s ready to “play hardball” with the state and county, by increasing wages now with temporary funding and then forcing the state and county to lower the wages if they don’t want to fund their continuance.

Board Member Heather Scott said she was concerned doing so could result in higher costs of other services, if revenues did not allow the continued funding.

Hiring incentives showing mixed results

This summer, the Wake County Board of Education approved hiring bonuses for new bus drivers, special education teachers and instructional assistants.

But recent data from the school district, requested by WRAL News, don’t show a consistent decline in vacancy rates for those positions since the beginning of the school year.

• Bus drivers: As of Aug. 11, the district had 138 bus driver vacancies. It was 220 as of late last month.
• Special education teachers: As of Aug. 13, the district had 85 special education teacher vacancies. As of Oct. 7, the district had 60 special education teacher vacancies — a nearly 30% improvement.
• Instructional assistants working in general education classrooms with general education students (only employed at elementary schools): As of Aug. 13, the district had 103 vacancies. That dropped about 17.5% to 85 openings by Oct. 7.
• Instructional assistants for special education students: As of Aug. 13, 184 of these positions were vacant. By Oct. 7, the openings for those working with special education students dropped by just three, to 181 openings.

Those instructional assistants help special education students so that the students can stay in the general education classroom, rather than being designated to a special education classroom. Federal special education law considers placement in a general education classroom preferable. It’s often also part of the student’s individualized education plan, which seeks to address the student’s disability sufficiently to allow them to succeed academically.

Paula Wright, an instructional assistant for the past eight years, told the board she would have to work 20 years in the school district to earn $15 per hour.

“That is shameful,” she said. “I love my job. I have wonderful students. I love the school I work with. But I’m tired of receiving free T-shirts and free lunches. We deserve better. We need to be paid more than a Walmart employees, Costco employee, and Chick-Fil-A.”

The district also offered extra pay for in-person teachers who would use their plan period to teacher a virtual academy class.

As of Aug. 13, the district had 151 general education teacher and 130 virtual academy teacher vacancies. Those combined, as of Oct. 7, were 196 — a decline of nearly 100, as open positions for some virtual academy teachers were eliminated.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described how much salaries for educators would increase. The increase is to the local contribution to their salary only, not to their overall salary, which is mostly funded by the state.