According to TeachNC on November 3rd of 2021, there were over 8500 vacancies in North Carolina for classroom teachers ALONE.

In all, there were over 23,600 vacancies.

Just looking at those teacher vacancies from 2021 – the average salary of a teacher in NC was right under $55,000 a year (according to the report from the John Locke Foundation).

Teachers are paid ten months our of the year. That would mean an average of $5,468 a month per teacher. But if 8504 teaching positions were still vacant, that means a little over $46 million dollars is not being paid in salaries on a monthly basis.

Add to that, there are retirement funds were not being met by the state for those salaries.

Yet, the same amount of work was having to be done by fewer people whose salaries had not been altered.

That was in the third month of the 2021 – 2022 school year. Where was that $46 million dollars a month going?

We are about to enter the 2024-2025 school year. And while there have been fewer vacancies (not necessarily because all of the previous vacancies were filled), there are still thousands of openings not filled.

So where are those millions and millions of dollars in those already budgeted salaries for positions that were never filled going?

Because it is no longer just what was not spent in salaries for 2021 – 2022.

It’s been going on for years now.