NC House Democrats and school board members sound an alarm over lack of state budget
North Carolina House Democratic lawmakers and school board members warned Monday that schools won’t have all the teachers and bus drivers they need due to the lack of a state budget.
Traditional-calendar schools will open in two weeks, bringing 1.5 million students into class for the start of a new school year. But school districts say the lack of a state budget means they’re at a disadvantage hiring needed school employees when they can’t tell people how much they’ll be paid.
“Right now we can’t even tell our staff and our hires what they might be making next month with any certainty,” Wake County school board vice chair Chris Heagarty said at a news conference in the Legislative Building. “That uncertainty makes it hard to fill those crucial jobs that our families rely on to educate and transport their children.”
House Democrats, joined by school board members and parents, held news conferences across the state to raise concerns about the lack of a state budget and Republican budget plans.
“Pass the budget as soon as possible,” said Rep. Rosa Gill, a Wake County Democrat. “Increase teachers’ and other educational resources’ pay and increase per-student spending. We have the resources. Let’s use them.”
GOP still negotiating state budget
Even though the GOP has a legislative supermajority to pass a budget, the House and Senate haven’t agreed on a plan yet.
House Speaker Tim Moore has said there’s “zero chance” the budget will pass before Sept. 1 due to ongoing GOP budget negotiations, The News &Observer previously reported.
On Monday, Senate leader Phil Berger told reporters that it’s a more likely scenario that the budget would be adopted the second week of September.
Until a budget is adopted, schools are operating on last school year’s funding levels. This includes delaying any planned pay raises, which will be applied retroactively when a state budget is approved.
“I would say that we have, for all practical purposes a budget going forward,” Berger said. “We don’t have the kind of shutdowns that you see at the federal level when, when there’s a disagreement or some failure to move forward. We are making progress on the budget.”
Schools need teachers, bus drivers
At the news conference in Raleigh, the plight of the Wake County school system was highlighted. North Carolina’s largest school system has hundreds of teaching vacancies just before the start of classes for most students.
“I saw one teacher teaching three classrooms at once,” said Rep. Tim Longest, a Wake County Democrat. “Teachers are superheroes, but it’s not in their job description. It’s the job of the state to provide a sound basic education to every student.”
Wake also faces a shortage of school bus drivers that could cause 2,000 students not to have daily bus service at the start of this school year. This comes on top of shortages the past two years that daily have resulted in some families finding out they need to provide their own transportation.
“While families are struggling to figure out how their kids are going to get to school and if they will have qualified teachers, the North Carolina legislature is sitting on billions of dollars,” said Teresa Jones, president of the Wake County PTA Council.
Heagarty, who is also a former state Democratic House member, said it’s hard to hire bus drivers when they can make more money working at Chick-fil-A. The state pays the base salaries of most school employees with counties providing local salary supplements.
But Berger downplayed the impact of the budget delay.
“The folks that are going to get raises will get those raises,” Berger said. “It’s just that they might be delayed a little bit. I don’t know that that’s something that as a practical matter, really impairs things. Certainly not the way if that’s the case, not the way it was impaired a couple of years ago, when the governor vetoed raises and didn’t give them at all.”
Is GOP trying to starve public schools?
Republican lawmakers are expected to include tax cuts in the state budget, as well as increasing funding for the Opportunity Scholarship program so more families can get state funds to attend private schools.
But Democrats complained that the GOP is not complying with a 2022 N.C. Supreme Court order to increase school funding as part of the long-running Leandro court case. The case is in limbo after the Supreme Court’s new GOP majority blocked the money transfer.
“Press the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate to say, ‘Look if you value education, then put your money where your mouth is,’” said Wake County school board member Tyler Swanson, a former teacher. “Use the money that we’re sitting on for the rainy day fund.”
While the budget is still being worked on, Republican lawmakers could vote this week to override several of Cooper’s vetoes over charter schools and restrictions on transgender youth and gender identity discussion.
Rep. Julie von Haefen, a Wake County Democrat, said the GOP’s “end goal is to divest in and dismantle our public education system.”
“This plan is clear: Starve public schools of what they need to succeed and then criticize them for their shortcomings,” von Haefen said. “Erode trust by stoking fear and divisions, creating rifts between parents and teachers.”
Democratic lawmakers said public schools are in crisis due to lack of support and are not, as some critics say, overfunded.
“Sometimes we tend to look at dollars and we think ‘oh, they’ve got more money than they need,’” Gill said. “That is not the case. I don’t think the school system will ever have more money that they need.”
This story was originally published August 14, 2023 at 1:04 PM with the headline "NC House Democrats and school board members sound an alarm over lack of state budget."
