RALEIGH (November 13, 2025) – Teacher pay remains an essential issue in North Carolina – an issue ultimately for our most precious resource: Our children.

And it’s not going away.

Despite its rapid growth, our state ranks an embarrassing 43rd in average K-12 teacher pay.¹ It has seen ghastly attrition among its teacher workforce for several years, losing one in 10 teachers from March 2023 to March 2024 alone.²

Teachers are bailing out of a state that fails to support them.

We are one of just two states that haven’t adopted a budget that would provide teachers with long-delayed raises in a fiscal year that began four months ago.

Add to that planned changes in the State Health Plan, with increases in premiums and deductibles come January,³ and our children’s teachers are looking at an effective pay cut this year.

A pay cut.

After several years of unrelenting inflation.

WHAT IS WRONG with our state’s General Assembly? Do legislators not see the critical value of the people who, at modest pay, produce the workforce that helps North Carolina rank No. 1 in business?

One doesn’t happen without the other.

Why do state legislators fail to see that connection?

And fail to do so year after year?

Are they simply incompetent?

Or do they dump hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into vouchers – with no limits on the income of recipients – for kids to attend private schools because they yearn for some resegregated, pre-Brown v. Board world?⁴

The state House has offered a plan to give teachers raises that would average 8.7% over two years. But the obstinate state Senate continues to resist.⁵

What does the House understand that the Senate doesn’t?

Sorry to disappoint you, but this is the 21st century.

North Carolina legislators need to get over their sandbox games and grow up.

SOME TEACHERS across the state staged a walkout last week to protest their working conditions.⁶

Our pitiful legislature – with both chambers dominated by Republicans – needs to get its act together and appreciate the teachers who create all other professions.

This is not a partisan issue – it’s a dispute between fellow Republicans. Can Republicans – particularly Republicans in the state Senate – not get it together to govern as our children, indeed all our citizens, deserve?

Thus far, with this legislature, apparently not.

LEGISLATORS FROM both parties also need to stop ignoring multiple rulings from the state’s highest court that they must provide each child in this state a sound, basic education.

If we were to grade this legislature on what it has done for the people of North Carolina – by abdicating its most basic responsibility to adopt a state budget – we would give it an F.

Or at best, an Incomplete.

Do your job, legislators. It’s what you were elected to do. If you fail at this most basic civic task to adopt a state budget, there might just be consequences at the ballot box.

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1 https://publicedworks.org/2025/05/nc-teacher-pay-now-ranks-43rd/.
2 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article303312256.html.
3  https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article312683081.html; https://www.wral.com/story/nc-state-health-plan-leaders-vote-to-raise-health-insurance-premiums-on-state-workers/22119719/; https://www.wral.com/story/higher-premiums-coming-nc-state-health-plan-to-undergo-major-overhaul-in-2026/22118844/; https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2025/11/07/nc-state-health-plan-budget-funding-brad-briner.html.
4 https://publicedworks.org/2025/01/vouchers-next-step-to-dismantle-nc-public-schools/; https://publicedworks.org/2024/11/vouchers-resegregation/.
5 https://publicedworks.org/2025/07/house-budget-is-better-for-our-teachers-and-kids/.
6 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article312822794.html.