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Legislative budget includes 6.5 percent pay increase for teachers

The state budget that lawmakers plan to vote on later this week will include a little more money for teachers, including a $70-a-month bump for long-time veterans, than initially promised, but not as much as Gov. Roy Cooper called for.

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By
Travis Fain
, WRAL statehouse reporter
RALEIGH, N.C. — The state budget lawmakers plan to vote on later this week will include a little more money for teachers than initially promised, including a $70-a-month bump for long-time veterans, but not as much new funding as Gov. Roy Cooper called for.
The average increase for teachers, once pegged at 6.2 percent, will instead be 6.5 percent, Republican leadership said in a Monday afternoon news release. Cooper had asked for 8 percent on average and would have paid for that by holding back promised tax cuts.

Leadership for the Republican legislative majority is dead set against that. Even without it, average teacher salary for 2018-19 will be about $53,700, they said, pointing to a nonpartisan analysis by the General Assembly's Fiscal Research Division.

There was always going to be a salary increase in this budget, which takes effect July 1 and covers the second year of a two-year budget approved last year. But with Democrats making an election-year push on education funding, teachers protesting by the thousands at the start of this session and state revenues running a surplus, the GOP majority decided to do more than planned.

They also added a 6.9 percent increase to the salary schedule for principals, another change from the budget approved last year.

Salaries for veteran teachers have been one of the biggest philosophical divides between Republicans and Democrats, with GOP lawmakers focusing more on boosting salaries for younger teachers. In this latest budget, they add a new bump for teachers with 25 or more years experience, hoping to address a major complaint.

Those teachers will get $70 more a month under this budget than the version state legislators approved last year. Cooper's budget would have added another $100 on top of that at the 25-year mark, and more for teachers with even more experience.

North Carolina Association of Educators President Mark Jewell, whose group organized the recent teacher protests, called the legislative proposal "very modest movement for our most experienced educators." He said in a statement that the budget puts almost twice as much toward merit pay bonuses than it does toward veteran teacher raises.

The budget includes $22 million for bonuses to top-performing reading teachers in the fourth and fifth grades and the top math teachers in grades four through eight. Principals whose students show the most growth can earn bonuses of up to $20,000.

“Republicans are taking historic steps to raise teacher pay in North Carolina and to reward the excellent performance of educators who make a real difference for our students in the classroom," Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore said in a joint statement.

Cooper has called on the legislature to hold off on tax cuts promised several years ago as part of a multi-year phase in. He would have frozen the state's corporate tax rate at 3 percent and the individual tax rate on income after the first $200,000 a year at 5.499 percent.

These are scheduled to fall to 2.5 percent and 5.25 percent, respectively, in 2019.

Democrats are pitching this to voters as a battle between education funding and tax cuts for the wealthy, and both Cooper and Jewell hit that note in statements released Monday night.

"It's clear that the Republican legislature continues to leave veteran teachers and public education behind in order to protect their tax breaks for corporations and people making over $200,000 a year," Cooper spokesman Ford Porter said in a statement.

Republicans argue that this will be the fifth consecutive pay increase for teachers. The budget they're about to approve, combined with other budgets crafted by the GOP majority going back to 2013, make for a nearly 20 percent increase in average teacher pay, Republican leadership said Monday.

This new budget hadn't been released publicly as of 7:30 p.m. Monday, but it has been presented in private GOP House and Senate caucuses. The Senate Republican caucus wrapped up its session on the budget shortly before 7 p.m. Monday.

The budget is expected to be released at some point Monday night, discussed publicly in a joint House/Senate appropriations meeting Tuesday and move to approval votes on the chamber floors this week.

No amendments will be allowed once the budget, crafted behind closed doors, is released. Democrats have complained repeatedly about this process. Cooper complained Monday that, "there are still many more questions than answers in this budget as people try to read and understand major policy changes the Republicans have kept secret and are now forcing legislators to vote up or down with no way to amend it."

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