Keri Lane isn’t surprised to learn Wake County ranks far behind similar metropolitan areas when it comes to pay.
Lane has taught in the Wake County Public School System for about two decades and works seasonal side gigs to boost her pay.
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“It’s exhausting, and I’m still barely making it,” she said.
After 22 years of teaching experience and after earning extra certifications, Lane earned about $80,000 last year from teaching. She has supplemented that income with tutoring, test writing and scoring portfolios — all independent contract jobs that can earn her a few hundred or a thousand more per month and take up 12 or more hours per week.
Wake County pays its teachers less than school districts in nearby metropolitan areas with similar costs of living, according to a WRAL News analysis. That can be a difference of a few thousand dollars per year, or tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars over a career.
The state pays the bulk of teacher pay in most states, and local school districts pay a supplement on top of that. Nearby states often contribute more than North Carolina, and the local school districts in those states often contribute more than Wake County, too.
Similarly, who’s more responsible for increasing pay for teachers in North Carolina and in individual districts depends on who you ask.
“The majority of that work has to happen at the state level, and so we're pleased to see the increases in teacher salaries this year, and we hope that's something that continues,” Wake Superintendent Robert Taylor told WRAL News.
State lawmakers recently approved an average pay boost of 8% for North Carolina teachers, with higher raises going toward early career teachers and raises hovering closer to 5% for more veteran teachers. After a year without any cost-of-living adjustments, the raises were some of the biggest in years.
Not everyone was overwhelmed with the raises.
“I would not call a raise that arrived twelve months late ‘progress’ because a raise doesn't undo the damage that has occurred over years of mismanagement from this legislature,” Senate Democratic leader Sydney Batch, D-Wake, told WRAL News. “Inflation ate into every educator's paycheck while their salary sat frozen, and things like health insurance premiums continued to rise, even when their pay didn’t.”
Republican leadership has continually raised average teacher pay, Demi Dowdy, a spokeswoman for state House Speaker Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, told WRAL News.
“Unfortunately, Wake County is shortchanging teachers. ... Wake County should prioritize teachers in its own budget,” Dowdy said.
The school board has maintained its local teacher salary supplement but, unlike the state, might not increase it this school year.
The school board originally planned to include a 1% increase to that supplement — amounting to pay increases of just $73 to $144 for the year, on top of the state increases.
But district leaders are now advising the board to not move forward with that plan, in an effort to save $1.9 million. The district needs more than $17 million additional dollars this fall than originally budgeted for because it needs to raise pay for its 4,000 locally funded employees to match the salary increases of the state-funded employees. A final decision on the raises is expected later this month.
School Board Chairman Tyler Swanson said last week he isn’t committed to a specific cost saving plan for the district, but he and other board members have raised concerns about pay. Swanson, a former Enloe Magnet High School teacher, said pay was among the reasons he quit teaching.
“When I hear from the teachers and educators, it's pay,” Swanson told WRAL. That’s their main concern, he said.
But upping pay isn’t an easy thing to do when districts have competing spending priorities. Wake, for instance, is trying to find money to match the state raises while also working to reduce its growing $800 million in deferred maintenance on its school buildings.
Under North Carolina law, counties are responsible for facilities, and the state is responsible for education.
For veteran teachers like Keri Lane, that 1% supplemental pay increase wouldn’t change her plans.
She’ll keep teaching, she says, because she loves it, but also because she’s stuck career-wise.
“Beginning teachers absolutely need that higher pay and deserve it, but two things can be true at once,” Lane said. “We need to also raise the veteran pay because a lot of us are stuck in a situation where we can't just have another career right now. We can't just uproot our families and go to a different location. A lot of us are stuck with the mindset of like we have to wait it out until retirement and do as much as we can.”
Lane only earns as much as she does teaching from extra certifications. She is National Board of Professional Teaching Standards-certified and is a legacy recipient of North Carolina’s old master’s pay program, something Wake County continues but that the state no longer pays for. If she didn’t have those things, she would have earned $65,000 last year.
With the new state pay raises, she’ll likely earn north of $83,000 from teaching next year.
She has two adolescent children with her husband, who works full-time as a warehouse manager and part-time as an ice hockey referee.
Lane would likely be earning more than $100,000 if she’d stayed in her teaching job in her native New York. But there, she was commuting 90 minutes each way to get to and from work.
Here, she can live a few minutes from her school, although it still feels expensive.
“I believe in Wake County public schools,” Lane said. “My coworkers are so amazing. The quality and the love from the staff — I wouldn't want to trade that for my personal kids. But I see how exhausted everyone's showing up, because we're all sharing our stories with each other because we all want to know: How do we survive every day?”