Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools leaders say they’re promoting equity with a new schedule that standardizes what teachers get paid for taking on such extra duties as band, dance, drama, yearbook and academic clubs. The new stipend schedule, which does not cover athletics, ranges from $200 for teachers who advise student clubs to $2,000 for high-school band, orchestra and theater.
Earlier this month, several teachers and students told the school board the payments aren’t enough to cover the extra hours teachers spend helping students prepare for performances and competitions.
Bryan Sun, a rising senior at Providence High, said his school has struggled to find someone to coach speech and debate.
“I’m grateful for the opportunities CMS has been able to provide for me, but the fact of the matter is the stipend proposal for the upcoming school year simply isn’t good enough,” he told the board. “Without proper funding, my speech and debate program, which boasted national champions just three years ago, will cease to exist.”
Nicole Jenkins, a Providence English teacher and former debate coach, says the school has offered an extra $1,500 for years. Under the new plan, speech and debate is classified as an academic club, and the coach gets $500.
“We’re talking well over 300 hours of work, lots of weekends,” Jenkins said in an interview. She said she suspects the district’s new administrative team doesn’t understand how much time CMS speech and debate teachers put into preparing for and taking students to competitions.
Fair or tight-fisted?
It’s impossible to tell how many CMS teachers will see cuts in their stipends, which have also been known as honorariums.
CMS declined to make anyone available for an interview or say what the range of payments has been.
“In the past, each school was provided a designated amount and there was a process by which a school committee prioritized the clubs and activities to determine the amounts provided to each teacher,” the district said in a written statement. “The new plan is a more streamlined plan to ensure there is a more consistent and equitable process across the district.”
Jenkins provided a document that was shared with teachers in June. It lists the average payments for 2023-24 as $1,736 for student government advisors; that’s dropping to $1,000 in the coming year. Yearbook advisors would drop from an average of $1,201 to $1,000. But stipends for band, dance, choral music and drama would be higher than last year’s averages.
Jenkins also noted that CMS payments compare poorly with those in Wake County. Wake’s pay for extra duties is based partly on experience. Wake’s pay schedule tops CMS even at the lowest experience levels. For instance, a high school band director qualifies for a minimum of $6,117 in Wake, compared with $2,000 in CMS.
Not just extras
Jenkins says stingy stipends make it tough for CMS to recruit teachers who are expected to put in long hours after school and on weekends, or to persuade current teachers to take on extra duties. That endangers the district’s ability to create or sustain strong extracurricular programs, she said.
“We are losing teachers and we are losing students who are going to go enroll in places – whether it’s a charter, whether it’s a private or another county – where they have robust programs,” she said.
And she said students connect with the arts, yearbook, debate and other activities that encourage academic engagement and attendance, at a time when districts across the country are struggling with both.
“Students who find their place and find their home and find their people, they are just more engaged academically,” she said. “They have a stronger sense of self, which feeds that emotional wellbeing.”
The memo outlining the new CMS stipend schedule says the plan will be re-evaluated in spring, with stipends paid at the end of the school year. Jenkins says if it’s too late to make changes this year, she and other teachers will work on boosting the stipends for 2025-26.
