Vacancies for jobs only tell part of the story.

The calculated narratives about how badly our public schools have been performing for the last ten years are manufactured on half-truths and bolstered by a glaring lack of proper funding.

When a state is sitting on billions of dollars in surplus, throws hundreds of millions more at unregulated vouchers, tries to do away with corporate taxes, and openly neglects a court-ordered decision to fully-fund our public school system, there will be consequences.

And those consequences will have more consequences.

As of today, there are almost 10,000 reported vacancies advertised by TeachNC.

And that number doesn’t even take into consideration that many vacancies are no longer being advertised but at one time were filled.

What a veteran teacher received ten years ago compared to what a veteran teacher who would start a career in NC today is quite startling.

North Carolina now uses a school grading system that weighs results of standardized tests much more than growth measures.

10 years ago EVAAS was not the powerful yet erroneous value-added measure system used to “label” teachers.

It is now.

Just look at salary changes.

Ten years ago, the salary schedule would provide step increases for each year that a teacher served in the classroom.

Now that salary scale tops off at year 15 for ten years.

Go back a few years – say before the Great Recession.

2008.

If you started as a teacher with a 4-year degree you would make 30,430 / year. If you planned on earning a master’s degree you could with that same pay scale expect to almost double that amount in salary by the time you came to 30 years of service ($57,810 / year).

That would be a $27,380 / year increase.

A %90 increase in salary.

You would also get longevity pay for 20 of those years.

Now take the same scenario for 2023.

If you started as a teacher with a 4-year degree in 2023 you would make $39,000 / year. If you planned on earning a master’s degree you could with that same pay scale expect to make in salary by the time you came to 30 years of service $55,100 / year.

That would be a $16,100 / year increase.

A %41.3 increase in salary.

You would never get longevity pay.

Teacher pension is tied to the four highest years in terms of salary. In 2023 with 30 years of service (with a graduate degree that you would not get paid for), you would be making $2,710 / year less in real dollars than you would on the salary schedule used in 2008.

That’s not even considering the CRT hoaxes, the accusations of indoctrination, the book banning, and the other fabricated culture wars that have been stoked in the educational field in the last couple of years.

North Carolina, you are losing your teachers. Those people who are thinking about becoming teachers are having to think hard about an alternative.

And before you think that there may not be any ramifications to you personally because your children may have already grown up and have their own families.

The future workforce affects everybody and a well-educated workforce benefits us all.

Your property values are not linked to how well the private schools around you perform.

No entity reflects a community’s pride than the local public school.

Your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren deserve a quality public education as defined by the constitution.

And schools do not thrive without good teachers among them seasoned veterans who have made education a career and who can help lead and advocate for all public school stakeholders.

You lose good teachers, you tear at the fabric of the community.

And it will cost more to fix that later than to remedy it now.

Fight to keep good teachers in our public schools.