RALEIGH (April 17, 2025) – At a time when North Carolina is hemorrhaging teachers – when 1 in 10 teachers quit last year1 – the budget proposed by the state Senate offers them paltry raises.
More than 10,000 North Carolina teachers left the classroom in 2023.2 And the state is hiring more and more uncertified teachers.3
The budget proposal the Senate approved this week would give teachers a 3.3% raise and $3,000 in bonuses over the next two years. The actual amount a teacher receives will vary based on supplements paid by their county.
But can you say inflation?
It’s still not enough to lift a state once known for its devotion to public education from its current rank of 48th in per-pupil expenditures and 49th in the portion of its economy it devotes to public education.4
“It will be hard to be No. 1 if we’re No. 48 in education. That equation won’t work,” Willie Deese, an N.C. A&T alumnus and former President of the Merck Manufacturing Division, said in a Public Ed Works webinar Wednesday.
The National Education Association ranked North Carolina 42nd in starting teacher pay and 38th in average teacher pay last year. And it projected the state would drop to 41st in average teacher pay in 2023-24.5
The Senate budget would give other state employees – including university and community college faculty – raises of 1.25%, plus $3,000 in bonuses over two years.6
If nothing else is clear, it’s clear that the NC Senate does not value the professionals who create all other professions, who educate the next generation and prepare our state’s 21st century workforce.
It doesn’t value its people.
GOV. JOSH STEIN, meanwhile, proposed to raise average teacher pay by 10.6% over two years and raise starting teacher pay to $53,000, the highest in the Southeast, where it currently ranks among the lowest.7
“It is an embarrassment, and it does not need to be,” Stein said recently.8
A bipartisan group of House members filed legislation recently to spend $1.6 billion to raise teacher pay by $9,000 to $12,000 – an average of 22% – depending on experience.
Under the House bill, starting teacher pay would increase from $41,000 to $50,000, and pay for teachers with at least 25 years of experience would rise to $68,230. The bill would also restore pay supplements for teachers with master’s degrees.9
The Senate budget proposal does nothing to slow planned income-tax cuts – something Stein asked legislators to pause, with a deficit projected in 2026-27 – or to repeal more than $600 million10 in taxpayer-funded vouchers with no income limits for students to attend private schools.
ONE GOOD THING in the Senate budget is an additional $535.5 million it would devote to a new Children’s Hospital, a joint venture between UNC Health and Duke Health in the Triangle, bringing total state investment in the $2 billion project to $855 million.11
To do that, in a highly unusual maneuver, the Senate proposes to reel back $500 million it appropriated last year to NCInnovation, a nonprofit that wants to commercialize research findings at state universities outside the Triangle.
In lieu of that endowment, the Senate proposes to provide $25 million a year – roughly the amount of income the organization would earn by investing the endowment – for NCInnovation to make grants to the institutions.
You can ask those institutions how it feels to be jerked around by the North Carolina Senate.
The state House will now pass its own version of the state budget, leading to negotiations between the two chambers to decide what to submit to the governor.
3 https://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/article304291241.html.
4 https://edlawcenter.org/research/making-the-grade-2023/.
5 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article303312256.html.
6 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article304230011.html.
9 https://www.wral.com/news/education/nc-teacher-pay-would-rise-9000-12000-under-new-bill-february-2025/; https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article301495514.html.
10 https://www.ednc.org/number-of-vouchers-up-4594-after-expansion-of-school-choice/; https://governor.nc.gov/north-carolina-voucher-fact-sheet/open.
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