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- The recent and the stunning brutality and loss of life in Israel and the Gaza Strip is surely beyond heartbreaking, just to be clear, I'm not going to be insensitive.

However, as it was with the start of the Ukraine, Russian warfare, the Middle East conflict has the same distracting effect on us from a socioeconomic issue closer to our own communities.

Thank you for watching the most widely watched and longest running program on Carolina business policy and public affairs seen across the Carolinas for more than 30 years.

There is much speculation on will this current war, increase inflation, be a tipping point in the economy, not to mention further deteriorate and undermine global trade relations, but also education continues to be a battleground politically, not surprising, considering that education is an important input in not just communities, but we will unpack a lot of this later with our panelists and later on, Dr. Jeff Cox from the North Carolina Community College System.

Stay with us.

- [Narrator] Major funding also by Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

And Martin Marietta, a leading provider of natural resource-based building materials, providing the foundation on which our communities improve and grow.

On this edition of "Carolina Business Review", Brenda Berg from Best NC, Sherry East of the South Carolina Education Association and special guest, Dr. Jeff Cox, President of the North Carolina Community College System.

(upbeat music) - [Speaker] But God, we're good today.

- Thank you and welcome to our program.

We always talk about the fun stuff right before the camera comes on, so forgive us, but that was, we might get to that later, but Sherry, welcome.

Good to have you here, Brenda.

- Thank you.

- Nice to have you back.

I'm gonna start with you, Brenda, for better or for worse.

But, so we've got economic headwinds, we have now wars, which again, I don't want to diminish, but all of these, we have the cost of living.

We've got higher interest rates, we've got student loans restarting.

Do all of these things take the wind out of the sails for those who want to really address, seriously address teacher pay?

- I would say no.

I think it brings to light the challenges that all of these industries are facing.

I was at a conference last week and the head of the Georgetown Workforce Organization pointed out that we have currently for every job on the market, opening on the market, we have 0.8 people.

And not long ago it was three point something, right?

So whether it's filling teacher vacancies and as we say, you're trying to almost find just warm bodies.

It's not just teaching, it's other industries, right?

So to be able to go forward with the point that it's a tough time to hire and we need to use every single tool in our toolbox, I think we're able to make that case.

Particularly my organization, since we represent the business community and we use business language to talk about the starting pay.

Both of our states had significant increases in starting pay this year, that's good for attracting.

But then what are we doing for our veteran teachers?

How are we creating, for example, in North Carolina, we have advanced teaching roles where you can earn up to $20,000 to take on a special role within the classroom.

So how are we thinking about all those components in the teaching sector as we do with any of our private industry?

So I think it actually just sort of brings up, elevates the conversation, but funds are limited, right?

So it's always about where are you gonna get the resources?

But I think if you start with a really solid case, you can make a better argument for getting the funds.

- Sherry, in your opinion, and I use the term fixing teacher pay, but advancing teacher pay, would that go a long way in helping the retention problem, by and large?

- It would, it would, but actually when we polled our people, "Why were you walking out?"

Like why are your veteran teachers leaving?

Why are your first year zero to five years leave, 50% of them leave within zero to five years.

Like, what's going on, is it just money?

And it wasn't just money, like money will always help.

I'm not gonna say don't give us money.

Money will always help the problem with teacher pay, but they're really, it was a combination of the workload, what you're asking them to do for that amount of money.

That's where they were like, "I'm missing time with my family.

I don't feel like I'm a good mom to my own children because I can't attend their events because I'm staying late at school to attend my events.

So when we asked like, point blank, "What's going on?"

It was mainly time.

So when you go into education, you're not gonna own two or three homes and the fancy cars and you're okay with that, but it's that work life balance that they don't have right now.

And they would say, "If I don't go in early, if I don't stay late, if I don't do work on the weekends, I can't get my job done."

And so we've gotta figure out to balance the pay versus what we're asking teachers to do for that amount of money.

And a lot of teachers have said it's not worth it anymore.

And they've left the profession in droves.

We're seeing in South Carolina teachers leaving mid-year and that has never usually happened.

They'll try to make it through the end of the year, but they're not there anymore, they're finding other jobs.

- Well, hold on, Brenda, I wanna ask you another question off of that.

Is it hard to mobilize businesses to see it the way you see it?

In other words, you can get the top of the house to say, "Absolutely we're gonna fit this teacher pay issue.

But are businesses really stepping up, are they doing it?

- Absolutely.

Because I think part of it is organization like ours bridges that conversation.

She just laid out such an important point, that zero to five workforce, the way the education system is set up, the average principal has 50 direct reports, and that beginning teacher actually ends up oftentimes getting the hardest classroom in the building.

So we're throwing them into the deep end because we want to reward our more experienced teachers with a smaller classroom instead of more pay.

So all of this is interconnected.

And so when these begin, when I ran my, I had a global retail products company.

When I brought in a new sales person, I didn't give them the hardest account, right?

So when you say that to a business leader, our average principal has 50 direct reports.

Our beginning teacher gets the hardest account.

They don't have someone coming through their classroom and standing next to them and helping them teach.

So they feel really lost.

And so that whole experience has to be solved with more than pay.

But pay becomes a catalyst where you can pay advanced teachers more to then do all those things, provide that support, pull out some of your students, push in with embedded support, all of the things that we do in private industry.

So if you use that language, I never have a problem.

'Cause if you say the average principal has 50 direct reports, a whole audience of CEO's jaws will drop to the floor.

- Yeah, no, I'm sure they understand the implications of that.

Sherry, so is there any, and this is a DNA and maybe even a stupid question, but is there any, politics aside, I know that's hard to do.

Republican controlled general assembly in both states, of course.

However, is there any meaningful cohort that doesn't believe that teachers should be paid more?

Is there anyone that really will privately say, "Absolutely, they deserve everything they can get and we wanna help them privately?"

- I would like to tell you that "No, everyone believes that we have a problem with education right now and teachers need to deserve more money."

But some people, there is a fraction from the business world actually, who said, "If you break it down by the days, you guys have a 190 day contract, if you want more money, then maybe you should work more days.

I've actually been told that by a superintendent from a large place.

And I was like, "Wait a minute."

He said, "So maybe you should poll your people.

Are they willing to work 10 more days?

Because if you break it down, it's that 190 day contract."

But if you compare it to people that need the same education level to have that job, it's not fair.

We we're definitely underpaid compared to the market out there.

So yes and no, but most people will say, "Well, just find me the money, it's a money issue.

Yes, we'd love to pay you more, but we just don't have the money to do that.

Yes, you deserve more, yes."

And how many people, this is my favorite thing.

"I could never be a teacher, I could just never do it."

Well then why are you asking me to do it for pennies?

Like why do you think?

And the other thing they'll say is, "Oh, it's a calling."

Well, at some point you have to pay your bills.

Like it is a calling, but I still have an electric bill.

And we found too, in our surveys, a lot of teachers are working double jobs.

- And that's the mentality we had when we were only hiring women who were not the breadwinner of their family and didn't have other career.

This is a 50 year old approach to, "Oh, they're teaching because it's a calling."

That's not the case anymore.

These are highly skilled professionals.

Teacher pay has now dipped below average female pay, which we all know is below average male pay.

We need to shift the paradigm.

And I will say on that 10 month, I hear the 10 month argument all the time.

We have gone in and actually calculated the number of hours a typical teacher.

- Do they ever work just 10 months?

- They don't, they work, if you look at the average number is 2080, right?

That's the number that we use when we're calculating pay for a year and when I calculate it for a teacher, it's right around the same spot.

Is it a day or two here and there, it's about the same.

They also don't get that flexibility of getting up to go to a dentist appointment or taking that time off 'cause grandma and grandpa are having an anniversary, so we really discourage the business community or anyone else from thinking of it as, "Oh, it's just a 10 month job."

It is a 10 month job, but they're doing 12 months of work in 10 months.

- Okay, this is not an oppositional question, but does that mean that the system of electing the right public officials is not working?

And what I mean by that is if the general assembly, doesn't matter what political persuasion they are, are not doing the job of the general public, then why should they have the job?

How do these folks keep getting reelected?

Is it because the elections need to be re reformed?

Why does the system does not honor the teachers?

Because Thomas Jefferson once said, it's defective citizenship, it's not bad politicians.

And I'm wondering, does it come back to those who are voting?

- Well, another terrible statistic for us, when we were doing some election work the last cycle, we found out that many of our educators aren't voting because there's a disconnect, I think, and I was one of those teachers, unfortunately, I got into politics later, I didn't connect the dot to the people I elected.

They had control over the books I use and my curriculum and my insurance and my pay.

I thought that was a local in-house, my principal was in charge of that somehow.

I did not realize the political arm that reaches into your classroom.

And I think a lot of teachers don't realize that.

They don't realize who's making those decisions are the people that you vote for in the election cycles.

And so we have a lot of work to do around who's in charge of your pay and who picked your benefits.

And you can complain about your insurance all day long, but did you vote to make sure someone who's got your back got elected?

And so hard conversations with educators around that is they need to be a little more active in the process.

And we're seeing that play out really with our school boards right now.

- We're out of time.

You're off the hook on that question, and maybe you do wanna weigh in, but I'm so sorry.

We're gonna meet our guest in a moment who has something to do with education, at least in the old North State.

But before we do that, coming up next week, yes, next week on this program, as we head into Thanksgiving, how is that possible that we're talking about Thanksgiving, but as we do bad for turkeys, good for Butterball, that's for sure.

The CEO of Butterball headquartered in Garner, North Carolina, Jay Jandrain will be here talking about what are they expecting for this holiday season.

And then also we will take a deeper dive in coming weeks around restaurants, why is that important?

Because after the public health pandemic, restaurants completely changed, much more expensive, really hard to keep workers.

But what is it like now and what's the future and long term and short term for restaurants?

Community and technical colleges in the Carolinas are not just important employers and economic development generators, but they go squarely to enhancing long-term growth in business and supplying a high quality workforce.

There is probably no better person equipped to understand that than the newest President of the third largest community college system in the United States serving 600,000 students each year, 58 college campuses, providing education to all 100 counties in North Carolina, joining us now, Dr. Jeff Cox, President of the North Carolina Community College System.

Dr. Cox, welcome to the program.

- Thank you for having me.

- Almost don't know where to start with you Dr. Cox, but thanks for being game and just a small note here, you are the eighth President in eight years, including the interims at the North Carolina Community Colleges System.

Do you hope that the mercurial nature of the turnover in that office is over?

And where do you go now?

- Yeah, that's a great question and frankly, it's part of the reason that I decided to apply for the job.

I've been in a local community college for the last nine years up at Wilkes Community College and just observing the kind of turnover we had had at our system office and my wife and I were empty nesters and had always thought we might wanna live in the city one day and so we thought this is a great opportunity and frankly, the system needs someone from my perspective at least, who has that local college experience being a President, understanding what it takes to run a college.

I thought our system office could use that same kind of leadership and we were at the right place at the right time to hopefully bring that stability back to our system office.

I'd like to stay in this role for a number of years and provide some steady, steadfast leadership to kind of reestablish that stability within our system.

- [Chris] Yeah, Brenda, question?

- Oh, I'm just so thrilled because also what Dr. Cox didn't mention is he was a superintendent in a K, 12 space, so he really understands the full continuum.

And also I'm on the community college foundation board.

So the community college system during that turnover was actually putting together a strategic plan.

And this could be a challenge for a new President to come into a plan that somebody else created or it could be an opportunity.

And Dr. Cox, if you could speak to how you have treated that as an opportunity.

- Oh, it's a fantastic opportunity.

Our own state board over the community college system has also gone through, over the last couple of years, a pretty rigorous process to develop a new strategic plan.

Alongside that, our foundation board, the same thing.

So it is absolutely the right time, right place to come together, bring together a lot of the stakeholders who are really wanting to see our community college excel.

And our new board chair Tom Looney has coined a new phrase.

We've been calling ourselves The Great 58.

He wants to move from great to extraordinary so it doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easily, but it delivers the point, being great is not good enough.

We wanna move forward and really make sure our community colleges are at the heart of meeting the needs of business and industry.

We know we're number one in the state, number one in the country for business for the last two years running.

But if we don't meet the workforce needs of all those businesses and industries, that statistic won't hold.

So we think the community colleges are at the very heart of that work and we're looking forward to implementing these strategic plans that are gonna help us do what we need to do.

- [Chris] Yeah, Sherry, question?

- My question would be for a K, 12 educator, especially a high school educator, we're trying to prepare our students for whatever's next.

Is it enrollment, enlistment, or employment?

What are they going to do?

What three or what ways are they gonna go down those pathways is how do we have this communication between higher ed with our teachers on what you expect from our students and how can we better prepare them for your environment?

And how do we increase that dialogue between the two?

- That's a great question and again, part of the advantage I think I have that Brenda alluded to, is the first 20 years of my career were in K, 12, so I have a pretty deep understanding of what it takes from pre-K through grade 12.

But having transitioned now into this role, again, you see things through a little bit different lens.

And so what I think is really, really important for all of us is I mentioned the business and the industry, all the job expansions that are happening here in North Carolina, but also in South Carolina.

There's so many opportunities out there for great jobs and a lot, most of them, almost all of 'em, are gonna require some kind of post-secondary degree or credential, but few of them actually require a four year degree.

So we have to break this way of thinking that the K, 12 schools are just supposed to be requiring or are working toward getting students to go to a four year university.

And if they don't achieve that, then somehow they failed.

I think we have to change our mindset some and think about what is the real goal of education?

It's to help with social and economic mobility, help people to achieve better lives.

For some, for a lot of our students who are in high school seniors, about 40% of 'em in North Carolina at least aren't going on to any kind of post-secondary degree or credential.

That's our target group from my perspective, from the community colleges, we have to figure out a more compelling case to make to these young people on, there are great jobs out there and many of them you can get with just a very short term credential.

Just a few, several weeks or a few months of investment of your time and energy.

And you can get out and make a living wage beyond what you ever would've imagined.

And then scaffold that to think okay, you start with that, but then how do you build toward a two year degree or maybe a four year degree so you can continue to move up the economic ladder?

So figuring out those partnerships and helping students from as early as middle school start thinking about career pathways and the educational pathways they need to take to get to those great jobs.

- Brenda made a comment, President Cox, about that you're full continuum, you were primary ed and now here you are sitting at the top of the community college system in North Carolina, Speaker Pro Tem in North Carolina, Phil Berger was on this program about two months ago, and he didn't say this directly, but we did have a conversation about the, we'll use the term continuum and I mean primary community colleges, technical colleges in South Carolina, and then of course the four year institutions.

Is there some greater thought, and maybe not in the immediate offering, but would North Carolina, could you ever see a North Carolina having a bigger plan of having a closer relationship between four year community colleges and primary as being one solid piece to manage within some type of thoughtful move forward?

- Yeah, no, it's a great question.

It comes up, I would say at least on an annual basis, some consideration about, is there gonna be some sort of a larger consolidation?

Of course there is movement in Raleigh to have our K, 12 and university system and our community colleges all kind of headquartered in a central location.

I think we've gotta actually have value and having some level of separation within the three systems.

I'm actually speaking the next month up in the New York to their Board of Regents for their higher education system and they are blended and guess what, they want me to come up and talk to them about the value of having our community colleges separate from our universities.

I think they have some sense that they get swallowed up some in the higher ed space by being just part of that university system.

So they're different models.

But I think that one of the things I hope I can bring to this role is that knowledge of K, 12 and how can we build stronger and better partnerships to make it more seamless for our students.

And then moving forward to the universities as well, we have one of the best dual enrollment programs in the country with two things, our early college high schools, which are just fantastic opportunities for students to obtain a two year degree virtually for free.

And then our career and College Promise program, it's really grown throughout the entire state.

And again, this allows students while they're still in high school to start on a college degree and start really making progress toward that.

So we're bringing in kids who didn't think that they were college material, but they've learned they can do it.

And so it's helping us to, with enrollment and getting students on a pathway to a better life.

- [Chris] Mm hmm, Brenda?

- Yeah, it's not uncommon for, it's actually tens of thousands of students every year who are getting that career and college promise.

And then articulating to an associate's degree and then articulating to a four year.

And I'm also seeing this now that you've added teacher preparation, right?

You don't usually think of that as a community college vocation.

Could you talk a little bit about the two pathways to become a teacher through community colleges?

- Absolutely, one of the statistics that really is compelling about that piece, Brenda, for me, is the data is clear that students who attend a local community college, about 80% of those students stay in their local community.

Being from a rural part of the state, I've seen too many times those students, classmates, and then students as our superintendent who leave and go to the university town don't come back home.

And so we're left with a real dilemma about trying to keep some of our best and brightest students.

So this pathway for the educators to be able to get their first two years at the community college and then transition into university, I think really opens up the doors to a lot more students to consider teacher education.

And having been a superintendent, I know that the homegrown teachers tend to stay there, particularly in the rural parts of the state, which is critical.

So I think we've got a fantastic role to play in the teacher education pipeline and have already been having some conversations with President Hans about how we can further streamline that and so stay tuned.

- Well, and it probably doesn't hurt that President Hans had the job and knows the DNA, - Absolutely.

- Community College System.

- Absolutely.

- We have about a minute and a half last, Sherry, do you have a question?

- My question, you mentioned something that I think we need to really focus on is your homegrown, but career changers.

We have people, we're facing a shortage in South Carolina on teachers, but we have bus drivers, cafeteria workers, teachers', aides that would become the teacher if they could have a program maybe through a community college that would allow them to work.

They may not need to student teach, they're already in the classroom, so can we work on some homegrown ES, what we call support staff to certified staff programs for our teacher's aides?

Maybe you're in a special ed classroom, you know the work, you love the work, you love your community, but how do we turn you into the certified teacher in the classroom?

And I think the community colleges could play a role in that.

Are you doing any of that in North Carolina?

Do you have any advice on that?

- [Chris] In 30 seconds, sorry.

- Yeah, so I'll just say I agree.

I agree certainly with you in principal, having been a school principal, I know some of the best teachers we had came outta the ranks of the teacher assistants or bus drivers who knew kids, knew what the operation was like and when they entered the profession, they were doing it with their eyes wide open.

They knew what they were getting into and so they had a heart really for the work.

So yes, we're beginning to do some of that work to allow these pathways back in for folks who have an associate degree already, who have some experience in education already, but are looking to complete that teacher certification.

So we are working on that.

We haven't gotten it all perfected, but it's in progress.

- Dr. Cox, thank you.

I know you were at Wilkes Community College, but I suspect you may be Alleghany County's favorite son at this point, so we're glad to have you, please come back.

- It's my pleasure, thanks for having me.

- Sherry as well, please come back to the program.

- Thank you for the invite.

- I hope you're well and Brenda, always nice to have you.

Thank you.

- Such a pleasure.

- Thank you.

'Til next week, I'm Chris William, goodnight.

(soft upbeat music) - [Narrator] Gratefully acknowledging support by Martin Marietta, Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, Sonoco, High Point University, Colonial Life, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

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