Play politics with N.C. teacher salaries

by Rob Christensen, News and Observer, August 5, 2014.

It has been a long time between drinks of water for North Carolina’s public school teachers, victims of the recession and tax-cutting politics.

So most will be glad to get an election-year raise – on average 7 percent.

This is Politics 101. Legislatures often scramble to provide wage hikes during election years, no matter which party is in control. GOP lawmakers are proud of what House Speaker Thom Tillis called their “conservative revolution.” But while some laws are likely to play well politically – Voter ID for example – the polls suggest North Carolina’s drop to 46th in the country in teacher pay is not something you want to put in your campaign brochure.

Not only is the GOP concerned about losing swing seats in November, but Tillis continues to trail Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan.

Hence, the GOP has suddenly recalled that it was Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s pro education record that helped get him elected to the White House in 2000.

Tillis and Senate leader Phil Berger announced last week that the legislature was going “to provide (the) largest teacher pay raise in North Carolina.”

That seems to be a stretch.

Higher raises in past

During the last four years of Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt (1997-2001), the legislature passed the Excellent Schools Act, which included a string of raises that averaged 6.5 to 7.5 percent in an effort to reach the national average in teacher pay. In 1999, for example, the legislature provided an average pay raise of 7.5 percent. Although North Carolina never did reach the national average, it climbed from 43rd to 21st. The effort was derailed during the 2001 recession when Democrat Mike Easley was governor.

During Easley’s second term, teachers received an average of 8.23 percent increase, according to the Legislature’s Fiscal Research division. There were also raises under Republican Govs. Jim Holshouser (a 7.5 percent increase for all teachers in the ’70s) and Jim Martin (a 9.6 percent increase in the ’80s for teachers with three or more years experience).

When Democratic Gov. Terry Sanford was in office in the ’60s, teacher salaries rose 22 percent, financed in large part by his plan to remove the sales tax exemption on food. In the decade before Sanford in the 1950s, North Carolina had provided the smallest increase in teacher salaries in the country.

All of which bring me to my larger point: North Carolina has traditionally been a poor state and it has required sustained political will to find money to significantly raise teacher salaries.

GOP priority: Cutting taxes

The most recent gap between the pay of North Carolina teachers and the rest of the country began growing in the first decade of this century under Easley, but exploded under Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue. Perdue took office just as the biggest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s hit, and her focus was on budget cuts, hiring freezes, and trying to avoid major layoffs. During the first two years of her administration she had a Democratic-controlled legislature, and during her final two years she had a Republican-controlled legislature.

While the decline in teacher pay began under the Democrats, it should be noted that the Republican minority was not calling for higher wages or higher taxes to pay for raises. In fact, quite the opposite. The GOP minority was calling for repeal of the temporary tax hike the Democrats put on to prevent deeper cuts or layoffs.

When the Republicans took control, the economy was picking up. But their priority was not raising teacher salaries – it was cutting income taxes, corporate taxes and inheritance taxes for those with estates of more than $5 million (the only estate taxes still on the books). The legislature may have also been influenced by its hatred of the N.C. Association of Educators.

In the last decade, no state had a greater decline in teacher salaries than North Carolina. Tar Heel teachers received no wage increase for three years and a 1.2 percent increase last year.

It was one reason the Houston Independent School District recently had recruiters in Raleigh, Charlotte and Greensboro targeting our best teachers with starting-year salaries of $49,100 compared with North Carolina’s $30,788.

The Republican legislature was right to raise teacher salaries, which they project should raise North Carolina teacher salaries from 46th in the nation to 32nd.

But the tax cuts will make it difficult for North Carolina to sustain competitive teacher salaries beyond the election year.