Education

More pay, more mental health services top list for NC education group

The Public School Forum of North Carolina's annual Eggs & Issues breakfast coincides with worsening teacher shortages in schools and mental health among young people.

Posted Updated
Eggs & Issues 2023
By
Emily Walkenhorst
, WRAL education reporter
RALEIGH, N.C. — Student and teacher well-being were dominant topics at the Public School Forum of North Carolina’s annual Eggs & Issues breakfast Tuesday morning.

The topics drove conversation around the priorities the Forum and many educators and advocates across the state will push for in the coming year, including during the new state legislative session.

The Public School Forum formally unveiled its five top education issues for 2023, largely focused on teacher recruitment and retention and student health and academic needs.

“We know that pay is not the only thing,” said Lauren Fox, senior director of policy and research at the Forum, during the breakfast at North Carolina State University's McKimmon Conference and Training Center. “But we will not improve recruitment and retention or address teacher vacancies without significantly improving pay.”

A minimum living wage in North Carolina tops $48,000, she said, while starting pay is less than that.

Many of the educators who spoke acknowledged a difference between the solutions they offered and what the North Carolina General Assembly may offer this spring. Just a few education bills have been filed in the week since lawmakers began filing.

North Carolina serves 1.5 million public school students, many of whom are still working to overcome the slowed pace of learning caused by COVID-19 pandemic disruptions. Test scores last spring showed dropping student achievement across subject areas, though schools have since ramped up more initiatives to speed up student progress.
The Public School Forum’s top five issues are:
  1. “Fair and competitive” pay and benefits for educators, including a 24.5% pay increase to make pay similar to other fields that require a Bachelor’s degree
  2. Address mental health and school safety crises by providing more counselors, psychologists, nurses and social workers in schools
  3. Grow and diversify the incoming teacher pipeline and retain the teachers here
  4. “Prepare students for the world they live in.” That includes teaching students soft skills, like communication and empathy, and ensuring curriculum covers history, perspectives and content across diverse backgrounds
  5. Implement the remedial plan in the Leandro lawsuit
The lawsuit known as Leandro was filed in 1994 by five lower-income families and school boards, alleging the state was not providing all of the state’s students with an adequate education, as promised by the North Carolina Constitution. The state Supreme Court has sides with the families and school boards, but a solution remains unimplemented.

Boosting teacher pay

Dozens of educators, many of whom are no longer teachers, raised their hands when asked if they worked a side job, or multiple side jobs, when they were teaching.

Nadja Young coached, worked at a pet store and worked at a summer camp. She recalled taking a $6,000 pay cut when she moved from Colorado to North Carolina when she was still a teacher in the mid-2000s.

Eugenia Floyd, a former state Teacher of the Year and current teachers in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, said she doesn’t feel financially comfortable as a teacher.

“As a student in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, I was also living in poverty,” Floyd said. “Education was supposed to be my gateway out of poverty. But I'm one devastating event away from poverty. And that's a reality, not just for me, but that's a reality for many educators, if not all across the state.”

Pay has increased since then but remains too low, Young said. Mississippi raised starting pay to $41,000, she noted, well above North Carolina’s official starting pay of $37,000.

Young is no longer teaching. She is now director of education practice at SAS Institute.

“I just encourage us as a legislative body and business community to keep moving, keep pushing,” Young said.

Sen. Michael Lee, R-New Hanover, co-chair of the Senate Education Committee, said the state now provides a $175 million supplement to its base salary that varies district-to-district, in an effort to raise pay in smaller or less wealthy counties the way bigger counties have been able to supplement pay.

To recruit more teachers, Lee wants to increase “residency programs,” or more intensive teacher training and support programs for beginning teachers.

Union County Schools Superintendent Andrew Houlihan said leaders need to market the teaching profession to students when they are in middle school. They need to find ways to get more students into the teaching profession without significant student loan debt, as well, he said. That could involve working with community college or expanding programs that provide scholarships or tuition reimbursement for future teachers. Union County Schools plans to do some of that soon, he said.

Today’s young people fear college debt, he said, and they value being able to make a difference quickly.

“This generation wants immediate return on investment,” Houlihan said.

Union County Schools — once relatively immune to the ongoing teacher shortage — has had trouble hiring teachers in the past couple of years, Houlihan said. Many schools have offered retention and signing bonuses using federal pandemic relief dollars.

“That money goes away in a year and a half,” Houlihan said. “I’m not sure there’s any district in the state that has a stability plan to continue those funds… (to) continue strategies that are having an impact now.”

Making schools safer

Leah Carper, the current state Teacher of the Year and a high school English teacher in Guilford County Schools, said she thinks about student safety everyday.

“When I hear a balloon popping down the hall, I don’t think, ‘Oh, it’s someone’s birthday!’ I think, ‘What do I need to do right now?’” Carper said. “That’s where we are right now.”

Wake County Public School System Superintendent Catty Moore noted the state now requires each school system and charter school to have its own plan to address and improve student mental health and safety.

Moore said that’s an important step but not enough.

Schools need the resources to implement the plans they think they need, she said.

“Let’s resource what we expect,” Moore said.

Carper said teachers are overwhelmed with responsibilities always mounting and never being taken away.

“We’re at a buffet and we’re not hungry anymore,” Carper said. Schools want to train teachers to do culturally responsive teaching and trauma-informed teaching practices. Teachers may care about doing those things and simultaneously feel overburdened, she said.

“We think, ‘I don’t know if I can do it anymore,’” Carper said.

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