A teacher pay mess in North Carolina

Stephanie Wallace is one masterful teacher.

Wallace, who teaches English and Teacher Cadets at East Forsyth High School, has an amazing 180 former students who are teaching in classrooms across North Carolina, and several in other states.

“Truly a work of the heart,” she calls it.

A former NC Teaching Fellow at UNC Greensboro, she is in her 24th year teaching. Yet in our latest installment of Teachers Talk, she tells us how under the state’s pay schedule, she gets a raise only every five years after Year 15.

“I haven’t had a raise or a cost-of-living increase in a minute,” she says.

With a college student and a high school student of her own, that makes it difficult for her to support her family. Because they receive no additional pay for earning a master’s degree, she says, many teachers leave North Carolina for other states.

“We just have a teacher pay mess in North Carolina,” she says.

Yet Wallace still encourages her students to become teachers.

“We have to have a really hard conversation when all they tell me is, ‘Ms. Wallace, I hear I’m not gonna make any money,’” she says.

“They shouldn’t have to seek advanced degrees or have side jobs. I teach for NC Virtual Public (Schools) and I work at Chili’s on the weekends in order to be able to close the gap in my income and take care of my 20-year-old, my 17-year-old, college expenses, high-school expenses, all those things.

“Teachers should not have to work multiple jobs to be able to afford their classroom…

“That’s not OK. We can do better, North Carolina.”