Opinion

MARY ANN WOLF: New state budget is just a start. Public school students need much more

Sunday, Nov. 28, 2021 -- We are in the middle of a teacher shortage with a dramatically reduced pipeline, the teaching profession has been attacked and the working conditions of teachers are challenging and dire. We must do more. We need to make substantial investments in public education to ensure every child truly has access to a sound basic education to which our state Constitution says every child is guaranteed.

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Students in classroom
EDITOR'S NOTE: Dr. Mary Ann Wolf is the President and Executive Director of the Public School Forum of North Carolina.

Prior to the Thanksgiving break, North Carolina’s leaders enacted a new state budget for the first time in 3.5 years — at a time when the needs of our state’s 1.5 million public school students are greater than ever.

Teacher vacancies and the myriad challenges educators and staff face are significant.

Students’ academic, social, and emotional needs are enormous, given a global pandemic that has upended our world order.

In spite of these challenges, we continue to have amazing and effective educators, administrators, and staff who give their all every day for students to give them access to a high quality and equitable education.

However, we are in the middle of a teacher shortage with a dramatically reduced pipeline; the teaching profession overall has been attacked, and the working conditions of teachers are challenging and dire for many.

We must do more.

We need to make substantial investments in public education to ensure every child truly has access to a sound basic education, something to which our state Constitution says every child is guaranteed.

We now have before us a court order to invest in a Comprehensive Remedial Plan that identifies the investments that will ensure we achieve that constitutional obligation. And, fortunately, our state has more than an $8 billion revenue surplus from which we can draw to make these badly needed investments.

The best vehicle for investing in public education is through our state budget. There is no doubt that having a state budget in place is critical to identifying and supplying the resources that are designed to address the needs of our public schools.

The 2021-23 budget did take important steps to:

  • Finally implement teacher and staff raises and offer some much-needed one-time bonuses;
  • Hold districts harmless from reductions in funding likely due to the pandemic;
  • Invest additional funds in early childhood education, advanced teaching roles, and school and instructional support personnel.

However, on the whole, this budget did not acknowledge the full importance of public education for our state’s economic and workforce development.

The investments in the 2021-23 budget only tapped into a portion of the state’s revenue surplus available and funded only about half of the public school investments called for in the Leandro Comprehensive Remedial Plan. And, our state decided to also take steps to become only the third state in the nation to eliminate the corporate tax rate, ensuring that we will have fewer resources for public schools in the years to come.

What does this mean for kids and our schools? We know that teachers are the number one school related factor that affects student outcomes.

Teachers matter. For most teachers, this budget means a meager 1.3% raise after three years of no raises and their promised step increases. This is an average salary increase of 5% over the two years of the budget, and once again veteran teachers see the smallest increases of all.

When considering rising inflation rates and the lack of a raise for years, these are very small pay increases for many. For other districts, they will see an increase in the teacher salary supplement that will augment these raises and will hopefully make it more viable, especially for our rural districts to recruit and retain educators.

Investments in our educators make a difference, and we could have done more — and, in fact, we had the resources to do more — not only for our teachers, but also school personnel such as our bus drivers, cafeteria workers and other support personnel, early childhood education, and in so many other areas.

Finally, the introduction of personal and corporate tax cuts over the next decade means that the funding and opportunities we have now to support what students need will not be an option in the years to come.

To understand more about what the 2021-23 state budget offers for public schools — and what kinds of additional investments we need to ensure that every child has access to a sound basic education and that North Carolina is well-positioned for economic prosperity, read the Public School Forum of NC’s budget analysis linked here.

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