'Public crisis:' Wake educators plan rally to demand pay increase in face of rising cost of living
Families and educators are planning to rally on Tuesday morning, calling for the Board of Education to "do the right thing and honor their previous commitments by including a raise to the local supplement by at least 4% for all Wake County Public School staff in their proposed budget."
Demonstrators are expected to be at seven local schools and the school system's transportation complex, which will begin around 8 to 8:30 a.m.
Demonstrators are calling the rally a 'walk-in,' as they prepare to hold signs and chant while walking into the school as students arrive.
"Years of inflation and underfunding from North Carolina’s legislature has created a crisis in public education, leading to record numbers of educators leaving the field," Wake North Carolina Association of Educators President Christina Spears wrote in a press release.
Soon, state lawmakers will convene for a short session in which state employee pay will be discussed. The state is the primary funder of education in North Carolina and sets base pay for employees. Counties can then add extra to that base pay amount.
According to the Department of Public Instruction, 1 in 9 teachers left education last year, the highest total in at least two decades.
Monday's announcements says staff and families are demanding immediate action from the Wake school board to "keep our schools from failing by increasing local supplement raises to help hard-working educators maintain their homes and budgets in the face of a rising cost of living."
On Tuesday afternoon, after the rallies, the Board of Education will hold its last publicly announced work session on the budget. In recent years, vacancy rates have been high for some employees but have improved with pay increases, with the exception of bus drivers.
Board members will discuss at least four different budget proposals that include raises and that would cost the county between $63 million and $70.2 million more next year -- what would amount to a more than 10% increase in county funding.
Tuesday's walk-in participants will also speak with parents and hand out information in morning carpool lines. Wake NCAE encourages supporters to contact Board of Education members to meet Wake NCAE’s demands.
The series of walk-ins will kick-off with transportation staff at Rock Quarry transportation complex at 5 a.m.
The schools are South Garner and Green Hope high schools and Abbotts Creek, Banks Road, Turner Creek, Wilburn and Wildwood Forest elementary schools.
What's in the budget proposals
Each of the four budget proposals includes a different amount of employee raises. All include $1.1 million to raise bus driver pay from $18.555 per hour starting out to $20 per hour starting out, thought to be market pay for people with commercial drivers licenses. That would amount to a few thousand more dollars per year for bus drivers -- a position with a vacancy rate that keeps rising and was 36.8% in March. Thousands of children have extra early, late or missed pickups each day.
The proposed budgets also include raising other employees' hourly pay to at least $17.50 -- costing $3.5 million -- or as high as $18.25 per hour, costing $8.8 million. Each $0.25 increase could amount to $300 to $400 more in a year for a 10-month employee, depending on how many hours they work.
For teachers, budgets propose either a 4% increase to the local salary supplement, costing $7.6 million, or a 4.5% increase to the local salary supplement, costing $8.5 million. Each would amount to $300 to $400 more in a year for most teachers.
Vacancy rates for instruction assistants have improved alongside pay raises of several dollars per hour. The system had a 4.6% vacancy rate in March, down from as high as 11% in November 2021. For cafeteria workers, the vacancy rate was 8.2% in March, about the same as last spring. But it's been a major improvement since vacancy rates regularly topped 10% two years ago and even reached highs of 20% in 2021.
For teachers, the school system counted 1.5% of positions vacant in March, an improvement from more than 2% most of the past few school years.
The school system is proposing at least a $58 million budget increase for reasons other than pay. It's in part to keep substitute teachers, counselors, social workers and others hired using temporary federal pandemic relief dollars that will run out by September.
