Jacqueline is a sophomore in political science.
The Wake County Democratic Party sent out a press release recently endorsing the Democratic candidates for County Commission; it included a chart showing the amount of times current commissioners raised teacher pay. Evidently, the commissioners have raised their own pay by a greater amount and more often than they have raised teacher pay.
The press release doesn’t take into account that the numbers reported were supplements to the base pay the state provides, according to The News & Observer’s article, “Democrats fault Wake GOP Commissioners on teacher pay.” As the author writes, “It’s not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.”
But the point of the press release was to point out that the Republican-led commission had voted more times to raise its own pay than it did for teachers. It was addressing its actions as independent from the state’s efforts to raise teacher pay.
The press release states, “Over the past four years, they voted for budgets that gave themselves nearly five times more in pay increases than they gave teachers.”
The main principle and message of the press release is lost in The N&O’s reporting about the release. When it comes down to it, the Republican-led commission did raise its pay more times than it did for teacher pay; the fact that this happened is ridiculous and not what Wake teachers need.
Matt Calabria, a Democrat running to replace Republican Phil Matthews as a District 2 commissioner, said he wants to invest more in education.
“The fact is that the current Republican commissioners had opportunities to increase teacher pay and did next to nothing,” Calabria said. “These facts and figures informed voters that the Republican commissioners increased their own pay nearly five times more than they did teachers.’”
Yes, the state did raise teacher pay, but the point was being made about the actions of the commissioners alone. Obviously, pay hasn’t been raised enough since as The N&O reported, the state’s increase from “about $30,000 to $33,000 is hardly a game-changer for people trying to support their families,” and North Carolina is 46th in teacher pay in the nation.
“When Wake County loses over 600 teachers in a year and has teachers protesting in the streets, it becomes obvious that public education is not a priority for the commission majority,” Calabria said.
The commissioners did not put a referendum on this year’s ballot, so Wake County residents could vote whether or not to implement a sales tax increase that would supplement teacher pay.
As residents of Wake County, we deserve a Board of Commissioners in Wake County that makes public education a top priority and takes opportunities such as this to raise teacher pay. At the very least, make it up to residents in Wake County to decide.
There certainly need to be improvements in Wake County with the public school bus system as well. The News & Observer reported, “School officials say they only have 845 full-time permanent drivers for the 908 buses that hit the road daily.” Parents should be able to rely on buses being there to take their children to school instead of worrying and having to miss work to take them.
We’ve also seen the job fair in May, which offered some North Carolina teachers up to $16,000 more per year to teach in Texas, according to The N&O. With our teachers being tempted with better salary offers from a state across the country, more needs to be done to retain North Carolina teachers.
The N&O editorial board wrote of the current commissioners, “They’ve battled repeatedly over money and other issues with the Wake school board, sending a message that public education isn’t Priority One with them.”
I definitely kept all of this in mind when I went to the polls, and I encourage other voters to learn about the current commissioners before they vote. Wake County is a growing county with so many young people and we are not at all represented well at all by the current leadership. It is critical in their next term, the County Commissioners make public education a top priority.