- [Speaker] Coming up on State Lines, we'll discuss education in North Carolina and dig deep on issues like teacher pay, school choice options, and attracting talent.

This is State Lines.

- [Narrator] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[bright music] ♪ - Welcome to State Lines, I'm Anna Bevin Graveley.

Joining me today is Representative Ashton Clemmons of Guilford County, representative Jeffrey Elmore of Alexander and Wilkes Counties and Don Vaughn of the News Observer.

Welcome to the show, guys.

- Hi, thanks.

- Thank you.

- This week's show is focused on education in North Carolina.

It has been a big topic in the state for the past year, including the type of education a child receives.

Some believe more money should be given to public schools while others want to increase choice for parents.

Dawn, what are we missing between the conversation between traditional public schools and parental school choice?

- School choice has kind of been sort of this catchall phrase that means a variety of things.

Some people say it and think that it is just private school scholarships or vouchers, but it actually includes charter schools, which are public schools.

They're not traditional public schools.

They don't have the same type of regulation as traditional public schools.

So when people say traditional public schools, that means it could be traditional calendar or year on calendar.

I mean, that's another word where tradition is used, but kind of just what you've thought of historically and what's changed or come to the forefront in the past few years and it's been a little bit of a partisan divide is funding of the schools.

And if you don't want your child going into a traditional public school wanting to have that choice to choose a public charter or to use some now more taxpayer funded money, that'll go towards scholarships for private school.

- Representative Elmore, is there a a gap for parents in knowing all the choices that they do have?

Do you think that there's a miss there, or has that been advertised quite a bit?

- Yes, and I think that that's an issue that we have to look at in the future.

We've did a massive expansion of the opportunity scholarships in the state budget, but with it, we did increase some marketing funds for that pot of money, but awareness of the choices.

Another piece that we put in the Parents Bill of Rights was notifying the parents of all educational choices in their county so they would understand that there are other options.

- Yeah, Representative Clemmons, what is your take on what Representative Elmore said?

Do you find that your constituents have a knowledge gap?

- No, I mean, I'm in Guilford County and I think that families know.

I think fundamentally, I believe that we are using a lot of state dollars to fund private schools that can discriminate against children in our state.

And so, not surprisingly, I don't think that it's in the best interest of our state.

Another option of school choice that wasn't listed is most of our traditional public schools have a wide range of choices.

My children go to magnet schools that are choice schools within our district, and there are many across the state.

We have early colleges, there's a lot of school choice within our traditional public schools as well.

But I do think whatever the options are, families need to have equitable access to that information and as Representative Elmore said, we have a ways to go and all families knowing what all the options are from traditional public schools, choices in public schools, charter schools, and then what the options are with school vouchers.

- How would you address that equitability gap that you just mentioned before?

- I think it's gonna look different in different areas.

So I live in Greensboro and what the lack of information access is gonna look different than it will where he lives in Wilkes County.

So I think understanding where families are getting their information is most important and that is gonna be different in different...

Even by zip code in our county is very different.

So I think we need to spend some time and energy understanding where families get their information and then how do we streamline so that you're not just getting information from this one place that that's gonna benefit that one place, but that you're actually getting information across the whole spectrum.

- Dawn, as a reporter, do you see the the need to continue to share this information or do you feel like it is on more the side of the lawmaker or think tanks?

Where do you see the journalists play a role in this?

- I think going through, I've written a lot of stories.

We write about the debate on the committee and on the floor, but it's also important to write explainer stories about here's what the bill actually says and what does this mean?

And then of course, what is the bill...

The results of the bill that like aren't laid out because all of that goes down ripple effect to the schools and that's come with some of the legislation this past year where the school systems are like, wait, what and we can't do this by this time that you want, some with Parents Bill of Rights, some other factors that I don't think that is always taken into account when legislation is first out there of like, how is this going to logistically play out in the schools.

I'm a public school parent and longtime school volunteer and seeing in the classroom and with the administrators as how the general assembly did this and then we have to carry this out.

And of course at the school board level, at the county commissioners who are the ones that decide the funding for the school board and then within each district, I'm a Wake County parent, which is a very large school district.

So there's different things at play than smaller districts.

But I think that my role as a reporter is really explaining what this means for you and our K-12 reporter does a good job of that where he writes, okay, this is at this point now where it's going to come to decision-making down to the school board level, to the individual school level and explain what this means for parents, for students, and for teachers.

- Yeah, thank you.

North Carolina has increased options for parents to choose what type of schooling works best for your child.

We've touched on a couple of those now, and we're gonna go a little deeper.

Over the last decade, lawmakers have passed policies that make it easier for parents to have a say in their child's education.

Some include school vouchers, charter schools, and then homeschooling.

Representative Elmore, we've seen a lot of more energy and increase in homeschooling, why do you think that is?

- I think every parent wants their child to find success and they want them to be in a place where they can find that success.

And for a lot of parents, they feel like that they could do that at home.

And there's been a lot of innovation in that area with homeschoolers grouping together to do activities together or one parent may have a strength in teaching math, and then the other parent takes over with the other subject matter.

I think there's a religious basis to that also, that some parents feel that they can present their child the education they feel is proper with more of a parochial bent to it at home.

So I think that's the reason why you're seeing the growth in that sector.

- Representative Clemmons, you mentioned earlier that the approach of sharing this information with different families is gonna look different.

Are we seeing a difference between rural and urban families when it comes to the different kinds of choice and specifically homeschooling?

- I mean, I think you see families everywhere are looking at what their options are.

Probably like John, I was during COVID teaching my children at home, which was I have a doctorate in education and I found it very challenging at my house.

So, I think through that process, everyone had to think like what's really happening in my child's classroom?

I mean, you had to experience it in a really different way than you've done it before.

There was innovation that has carried on.

I would say that that innovation happened in traditional public schools, it happened in charter schools, home schools, like all of us had to innovate.

So I think that in all settings, right, people are asking what is right for their kids, and that's inherently what parents do.

I think one of the challenges though is we are pretending that all options are equally available to families.

And when you have private schools who are gonna get up to half a billion dollars a year of state dollars, who can say, we're not serving your child who has autism, we are not providing transportation so your family who can't provide it can't go there.

We are not providing lunch and breakfast, which in my county is now 83% of the public school population.

I don't think it's fair to pretend that the choices are equally available, which goes back to your kind of core question about what families can choose.

And I told a story, but when I had a mom who said to me her child is autistic, she was trying to use the voucher for private school and three different private schools said that they wouldn't take him.

So I think, does that family have choice, no.

And that child is back in the traditional public schools where I know they're doing what they can to meet his needs.

So I just think that like fundamental to the question is what and how is choice actually, like you're saying, filtering down for families.

- It seems like the conversation has shifted more with parents at the center more than students and children and part of that is because of COVID and when schools were closed, were in person and all the ripple effects of that, for years that we're still seeing, a lot of people fell through the cracks and the parents that were involved and had things they liked or didn't like are paying more attention and being more involved in that choice.

But there are a lot of children, students out there whose parents aren't involved.

So the question of balance and making sure that everyone has the same opportunity is that if the parents aren't involved, is the local public school that they're just automatically enrolled in, that the parents... Our choice is just what's here.

Are they getting the same level of a good public education in North Carolina schools that other kids and students are, whose parents are spending that time where, oh, this works or this doesn't, or I wanna apply to private school and have a scholarship for that, or apply to the charter school or even within the traditional public schools, the magnet schools and other focus schools.

And you don't hear as much I don't think now just in the wake of the pandemic that centers... That the kids have this no matter what.

It's a lot of the parents having a choice to do this, but not all parents are paying attention the same way.

- Representative Elmore, we've touched on the COVID and I think that is a topic that we have all talked about for a very long time, but from what you're hearing from your constituents, are more parents being vocal?

I wouldn't necessarily say that they weren't paying attention before, but are they being more vocal about wanting options?

- I think what COVID did, and it kind of excites me as a teacher, parents became aware of the actual curriculum.

They could see it.

They were like, why are we doing math this way, or why is my child reading this?

What is the purpose of this?

And as I said, I've spent two decades in the classroom.

When I first started, I mean, a parent conference would be pretty much, how's Johnny doing in math and Johnny's doing well.

Okay, thank you, and that's pretty much the extent.

Now parents are seeing the actual curriculum themselves and they've analyzed it and they've said, is this good for my kid?

Is it not good for my kid?

Do I need to approach it a different way?

So I find that transparency exciting because it is... Parents are participating more than ever in their child's education.

And that's exciting to me because it takes all of us to help our children.

- Absolutely, state lawmakers passed a budget back in October, giving teachers a 7% salary increase over the next two years.

According to the National Education Association, North Carolina ranks 34th in nationwide average teacher pay and 46th in beginning teacher pay.

Representative Elmore, coming back to you, is there more to the story than those statistics or do they speak for themselves?

- Well, we have two different problems with attracting teachers in our state.

Our two urban centers have a very young workforce with a lot of turnover.

You will see them statistically drop at about year four or five.

But our rural counties have an older workforce that we're trying to retain because if the math teacher in Martin County leaves, it's very difficult to fill that slot because a 21-year-old that went to NC State is a little hesitant to move in very rural parts of the state just because of amenities and lifestyle.

So we're trying to tackle two different problems.

We targeted beginning teacher pay in this budget, took it to 41,000.

The average pay on our scale has now taken it to over 60,000.

But at the same time, we've targeted the rule counties with what we call the teacher supplement fund.

And this is matching local dollars, working with local dollars to help increase that, to pull some of these younger folks into the rural areas of North Carolina.

So we've got two different problems that we're trying to solve.

- So is there a nuance in that solution?

I think you've addressed the two problems quite well, but is there like a weave through the solution, if that makes sense?

- Always, I mean every policy debate is nuanced in a way that's hard to get down to a bullet point.

North Carolina had a historic number of teacher vacancies on the 40th day of school.

One in 18 classrooms did not have a teacher in front of them on the 40th day of school.

We have had almost the biggest drop in enrollment in our state education programs in the past 10 years if you look nationally.

My own child's teacher quit three weeks ago because she could make more money doing something else and she was a veteran teacher and he ended up having a teacher placed there with no experience, which is happening all over North Carolina.

So, what we are doing is not getting to the outcome of having a qualified teacher in front of every kid and we are getting farther away from that instead of closer.

And I think there's been a lot of emphasis on the starting teachers.

I think that's been a policy choice.

However, what it means is that teachers from their 15th to 25th year do not get an increase.

So you imagine in what other job for 10 years after you've already given 15 years, you don't get an increase.

And I mean, Representative Elmore knows those veteran teachers are invaluable in schools.

And so my heart breaks that many of them are making different choices because they're not being valued when you add on top of that the master's pay and longevity pay and other choices.

So it's always nuanced and there's always a choice to be made.

And what breaks my heart is that the choices that have been made have left our classrooms without our kids and classrooms without certified teachers and the people who have chosen this profession and stuck with it feel the least valued at this point because of the decisions that have been made.

- Dawn, what element of teacher pay is not getting through in headlines?

It's a very complicated topic.

It's held up the budget lots.

What are we missing?

- Raises is always the biggest budget topic.

And whenever I write about that, I hear from teachers and state employees and others about pay.

And a lot of the pushback is, again, you want to recruit early career teachers and you wanna fill across the state, but those long-term teachers are not getting more money and they faced a lot of public criticism the past few years.

And they're thinking, well, why don't I go do something else?

And then you lose them if you're not rewarding them, if you're not recognizing them in some way through pay is always the first thing, but everything else too, just how you talk about public school teachers and then it's not just the teachers, it's all of those non-certified school personnel.

Whenever I write a story about raises, I always make sure to... Every teachers are the headline and the state employees are the headline.

But then further down in there, the instructional assistants, the bus drivers, all of these other staffers that are often lower paid and those jobs are really hard to fill and with the bus driver crisis where public schools have just said, I'm sorry, no one is picking up your kid today.

Figure it out yourself.

And that's an emergency situation to solve immediately.

And just having empty classrooms where kids don't learn a certain subject for several months because there's no staff and the solutions need to come sooner than later and it's hard to blame people that work in schools and see, well, gosh, this isn't getting any better, I'm not making any more money, I'm not appreciated here.

I'm gonna go do something else.

But the other side of that is maybe someone wants a flexible part-time schedule and they like being a bus driver because of the interaction with the students and they're appreciated and they're paid well, then maybe they'll go be a bus driver or looking at becoming a teacher or some sort of support staff or something else.

- Representative Elmore, how do we attract the kind of talent that's gonna fill those vacancies with qualified people outside of pay?

- Sure, I think looking into your teacher prep programs, I think with also with what she was saying on public perception, I think right now, folks are looking at the education field in I don't wanna say a negative light, but they're looking at it different than they have before.

I think public perception plays a role with that.

I think programs like the Teaching Fellows, we did an expansion and some change in the policy and the budget there to try to expand that.

Now is that going to fix all of the problems of it?

No, but it does show that we are interested in getting folks in the field.

- Another innovative thing I think is the advanced teaching roles, which has been supported in several budget cycles and it allows excellent teachers to expand their influence and be able to work with other teachers, but without leaving the classroom.

So when we were coming up, if you were a good teacher and pretty quickly they asked you to become an administrator 'cause that was really the only option and the advanced teacher roles has given excellent teachers ways to stay in the classroom and have a greater influence, which I think is good and that we are seeing more and more districts wanna opt into.

- And that helps with a void that we have.

As time's moved on, principals and she has a principal background really were in the role of instructional leader.

They were playing that type role.

But as the administrative duties have morphed over time, it's become more and more and more.

Principal is an HR specialist, scheduling specialist.

- A bus driver.

- The actual instructional component that they need to lead in, it's become less and less, and this gives the teacher the ability to do that.

And the program does give flexibility.

So if you take on that role, you will receive more pay.

Also, we still have our bonus programs that are going on that if you meet growth and hit certain markers in certain subject areas that are highly tested, the teachers can bonus out that way too.

- How many counties or districts are taking advantage of that?

Sorry, I put you on the spot.

- I don't have that on my paper, I'm sorry.

- It has increased every year.

It started with like three or four and more and more are taking advantage of it.

- Are you seeing more rural or urban?

- Both actually, both.

- That's great.

- I was in Mount Airy city schools yesterday.

It's part of a tour and they're participating, so that's a very small system.

- Edgecomb County, I mean Guilford, so I think it's all different kinds of systems.

And it does take...

I mean, I just wanna be clear, it's not fully funded at the state level.

It does take like local dollars invested to support it, but there is support at the state level to incentivize the participation as well.

- And we increased that in the budget by about 22 million, but it's still at the experimental stage because there's a double-edged sword to that.

You have the teachers with the ability and flexibility to do what she's describing, but that also increases classes size many times.

So you can have classes where teachers are team teaching or such that could have 35 kids in them.

And we found that the reduction with class sizes that we put in has been very effective with our reading scores early on.

So it's a give and take as with anything.

- Over the last several years, education has faced quite a bit of change.

Learning loss, online courses, teacher shortages and expansion of vouchers to name a few.

Dawn, with a magic wand, where do we go from here in setting the vision for education in North Carolina?

- I think one thing that's really good about all of this in all conversations around education is that people always wanna make something better.

There's different elected officials, depending on their political party will have different thoughts on how that will be improved, but it's wanting something better, whether you want it for rank and file employees, whether you want it for traditional public schools, charter options within traditional public schools.

The school choice movement of having public money going to private schools, they want something better for their child, for other children, and there's always this innovation of new ideas.

The problem with that is if we were talking about veteran teachers a while ago, a teacher's been around 25 years and she might think, oh, it's another new thing.

Every few years, they wanna change this and I think you should listen to their experience and that sort of thing.

So I think that you really should listen to those that have have played the long game, so to speak, that have been there, have seen what's worked and what hasn't.

So the other interesting thing, nice thing I think is that the focus on parents sometimes that can be a negative where there's... And I even say this as a parent myself, where parents are listened to too much and you actually do need to listen to the educators themselves as far as what's best for the children going forward.

And I mean, kids move so they grow up so fast, and there's always this new group of students every year we're talking about the start of a school year and how everything changes and I think that brings new opportunities to test things out, make things better year after year.

- Yeah, excellent, thank you guys so much for your time and taking the time with us and the audience to be able to talk through these issues.

They're really important to parents and families, thank you.

Thanks to our panelists for joining us again.

Email your thoughts and opinions to StateLines@pbsnc.org.

I'm Anna Bevin Graveley.

Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.

[bright music] ♪ ♪ - [Narrator] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.