By Tamika Walker Kelly

We appreciate lawmakers’ recognition of the urgent need to raise starting teacher pay and restore master’s pay to help address the teacher shortage faced by our public schools. Attracting new and highly qualified educators into the profession is essential, but if we want our schools to be the best in the Southeast, we need to do more for veteran teachers, who are the backbone of our public schools.

A minor 2.1-percent raise for our most experienced teachers doesn’t send the signal that we value long-time education professionals, despite the scientific evidence that veteran teachers help students learn and grow more, and the reality that new teachers depend on the experience of their colleagues. When one in five teachers left North Carolina’s classrooms in the past two years, we need to focus on recruitment and retention.

While proposed salaries are a mixed bag, we remain concerned that both the Senate and the House budgets prioritize tax cuts and private school vouchers instead of investing in the majority of students. Our students deserve experienced, well-supported educators in every classroom, not a budget that prioritizes the wealthy and corporations over public schools.

Tamika Walker Kelly is the president of the North Carolina Association of Educators