Deborah R. Gerhardt, a parent of school-age children in North Carolina, is upset that her children’s teachers–including their best teachers–are leaving. They are leaving because the Legislature is driving the state’s best teachers away, she says.

Ten years ago, she and her family moved to North Carolina because of its reputation for investing in its public schools.

But that reputation has been squandered.

She writes:

After six years of no real raises, we have fallen to 46th in teacher pay. North Carolina teachers earn nearly $10,000 less than the national average. And if you look at trends over the past decade, we rank dead last: After adjusting for inflation, North Carolina lowered teacher salaries nearly 16 percent from 2002 to 2012, while other states had a median decline of 1 percent. A first-year teacher in North Carolina makes $30,800. Our school district lost a candidate to a district in Kentucky because its starting salary was close to $40,000. It takes North Carolina teachers more than 15 years to earn $40,000; in Virginia it may take only four. Gap store managers on average make about $56,000.

If you talk to a teacher in North Carolina, you will hear the bitter truth of how difficult it is for them to make ends meet. Most teachers at Ben’s school work at least one extra job.  An elementary school teacher told me that his daughters do not have the chance to play soccer or cello like his students. He has no discretionary income left to spare.

What are we teaching our children about the value of education? When my boys see a teacher outside school, they rush up to say hello, eyes bright with admiration and respect.  How I wish our children could minister to the adults in my state. While the majority of us remain quiet, North Carolina teachers face incessant reminders that they are not valued.

Both parties are responsible, she says. The Democrats froze teacher pay. Then the Republicans started an all-out war on teachers in 2013.

 Job security in the form of tenure was abolished. Extra pay for graduate degrees was eliminated. A new law created vouchers so that private academies could dip into the shrinking pool of money that the public schools have left. While requiring schools to adopt the Common Core standards, the legislature slashed materials budgets. According to the National Education Association, we fell to 48th in per-pupil expenditures. State funds for books were cut by about 80 percent, to allocate only $14.26 a year per student. Because you can’t buy even one textbook on that budget, teachers are creating their own materials at night after a long day of work. As if that weren’t enough, the legislature eliminated funding for 5,200 teachers and 3,850 teacher assistants even though the student population grew.  North Carolina public schools would have to hire 29,300 people to get back up to the employee-per-student ratio the schools had in 2008. The result?  Teachers have more students, no current books, and fewer professionals trained to address special needs, and their planning hours are gone now that they must cover lunch and recess.  For public school teachers in North Carolina, the signals sent by this legislation are unambiguous: North Carolina does not value its teachers.   

As a parent who is deeply concerned about the public schools, she is leading a campaign to raise teacher pay to the national average. Friends say this is hopeless because the Legislature is determined to wipe out public education altogether. But she is buoyed by polls showing that three-quarters of people in North Carolina think teachers should be paid more. “A nonpartisan survey from October 2013 showed that 76 percent of North Carolinians agree that public school teachers are paid too little, 71 percent think we cannot keep the most qualified teachers with the current pay scale, and 83 percent support increased pay for higher degrees. I love these data. They prove that the recent legislative assault on teachers does not reflect true North Carolina values.”

It is parents like this who will turn the tide in North Carolina, where the Legislature seems to despise teachers. The bottom line: It is parents like this who will vote these men out of office.

Over the past year, as I learn about what is happening in North Carolina, I keep imagining a scene where the leaders of the Legislature meet each week to think up a new idea to make teachers feel disrespected. “Well, let’s see, we have already taken away the stipends for graduate degrees. We have already taken away due process rights. We have already gotten rid of teachers’ aides. We cut the textbook fund. What can we do now?”

These guys are creative. What will they think up next?