It’s time for a fact check of North Carolina politics. This week, we’re looking at a claim that you've probably heard a lot in the long-running disputes about teacher pay. In a statement issued on Oct. 29, state Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton wrote, “North Carolina teachers are already the lowest paid teachers in the South.” For more, Paul Specht of WRAL joined WFAE’s Marshall Terry.
Marshall Terry: First, what is the context here? Why did Clayton issue this statement?
Paul Specht: The General Assembly this year has not passed a broad, comprehensive state budget for the current fiscal year. We're one of the last states to do so in the country. Usually, those budgets come with higher pay for all state employees. And so this statement comes as the Democratic Party is saying teachers — who we've seen lots of headlines about having to use their own personal money on supplies, things like that, as they struggle to get by - calling on lawmakers to set their differences aside and come back and pass something that can boost pay for public educators across the state.
Terry: For those who don’t know, what role does the General Assembly play in teacher pay in North Carolina? Is it all up to them?
Specht: The state government is the primary funder of teacher salaries and education. Now, there's some counties that generate enough revenue to be able to add what is referred to as supplemental pay. So you get your base pay from the state, and then the county will kick in an extra amount, whether it's a couple hundred, a couple of thousand.
This typically happens in the richer areas, the Wake Counties and Durham Counties and Mecklenburg. Some of our 100 counties don't have as much money to do that. It's important to note, too, that in our state, the local school board doesn't have any taxing authority. Some states they do. So everybody looks to the state for the primary budget to see what those top-line numbers are and how that'll be distributed to teachers.
Terry: How does teacher pay in North Carolina compare to other states in the South?
Specht: The first people we reached out to were at the state Department of Public Instruction. They oversee the state's public schools and how policies are implemented. They can see employees' salaries across the state, but they told us they don't collect data on other states. They only do North Carolina. DPI referred us to the NEA. They're the largest teachers’ union in the country. It's called the National Education Association, and they collect data every year and put it on their website. According to their data, when it comes to average starting pay, we do rank lower than some of our neighbors, Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina. But we are not the lowest. The NEA data shows that Mississippi has lower figures for both average pay and starting pay.
Terry: How did you rate this claim?
Specht: We rated this mostly false. You may say it didn't sound like from the NEA data that there was any truth to it. There is one group called Public Schools First NC. It's a local nonprofit, and what they do is only look at base pay. They only looked at what the states offer. What the NEA does is track total pay.
If you're in Wake County or Mecklenburg County, they look at what teachers take home. That includes the base pay and the supplemental pay. This nonprofit only looked at base pay, and by their metric, we would have the lowest starting pay among the Southern states. That's one kernel of truth that we took into consideration, but overall, we determined this to be mostly false.
These fact checks are a collaboration between PolitiFact and WRAL and you can hear them Wednesdays on Morning Edition.
