NC State Senate at It Again: Continuing Their Dismantling of Public Education

One thing is for certain, when our current North Carolina Legislature is in session, they are looking for ways to cut public education. Yesterday, it became apparent that our North Carolina State Senate has decided that they want to give teachers big pay raises, but on two conditions:

1) Teachers must give up their tenure voluntarily.

2) Teachers in the lower grades must give up having teacher assistants in their classrooms.

It’s clear our legislature is on a mission to get rid of tenure, and they will do anything they can, including using bribery in the form of pay raises teachers deserve. The level deviousness and subterfuge  Senator Phil Berger and Senator  Jerry Tillman and the North Carolina State Senate resort to in this matter literally leaves one tongue-tied. There are simply finding a “backdoor” way to continue their destruction of public education. One can almost picture ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) standing over their shoulder, leaning down and whispering these schemes to them.

In their budget plan, they trade teacher assistant jobs for the pay raises, thereby putting even more people out of work and making the work of lower grade teachers even more difficult after budget cuts the previous year forced most districts to increase class sizes. 

Here’s some of the other cuts in this NC State Senate budget that seem to show that our North Carolina Legislature is still on a path to dismantling public education is this state.

• In 2015 all drivers education funding in the state will be cut.
• NC Department of Public Instruction would see a 30% cut.
• Funding for buses and transportation would be cut in another bill.

When it comes to public education, I’ve grown to be surprised very little with what Senator’s Phil Berger and Jerry Tillman do when it comes to public education. They simply do not see it as important, why else would they be doing what they’re doing? What surprises me more? There still seems to be so little protest from other educators. Perhaps that’s because most of them have already left the state.

Perhaps the Houston School District want to run that advertisement again. I am sure there might be more takers this time. This keeps up, Berger and Tillman will have closed down public education in this state and all our educators will have moved to Houston. (See “Houston School District Lures Teachers with Job Fair."

See these WRAL articles for full details on these stories.

“Senate Leaders Defend Education Cuts"

“Senate Budget Funds Teacher Salaries Through Other Ed Cuts"

“NC Bill Would Cut Funds for School Buses"