North Carolina school employees would get a baseline 1.25% raise and a $1,500 bonus in each of the next two years under the state Senate’s new budget proposal.

The chamber’s proposed compensation increases would cost an additional $238 million yearly and coincide with more than $100 million in rising operational and benefit costs and other investments in career and technical education and teacher leadership programs.

But, the increases come with some cuts, including smaller pots for advanced placement tests, school district central office workers, numerous contracts, and mentorship and support for North Carolina Teaching Fellows. The Teaching Fellows program provides loan forgiveness for people who opt to become teachers; the program’s main feature is coaching and professional development for the teaching candidates.

The Senate’s budget doesn't decrease funding for private school tuition vouchers through the Opportunity Scholarship program, though Democrats and many public school advocates called for that. Gov. Josh Stein pushed to halt the program and eventually cut it once current recipients graduate. Groups promoting private school choice, such as Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, commended the program's continued funding. The program could cost more than $600 million next year.

Sen. Michael Lee, R-New Hanover, touted the more than $16 million proposed investment in teacher leadership programs — called Advanced Teaching Roles — and in a $1.7 million expansion of research-based literacy training to more teachers.

"This training is really grounded in the science of reading to ensure evidence-based instructional practices," Lee said.

BestNC, an education-focused nonprofit coalition of business leaders, celebrated the growth of the Advanced Teaching Roles Program, which Brenda Berg, the group’s chief executive, said helps schools leave an outdated organizational structure that keeps teachers out of leadership roles.

"Advanced Teaching Roles changes the outdated organizational structure of our schools, one developed during the Industrial Era, to provide career advancement and leadership opportunities — along with meaningful pay increases — to our most effective educators and embed real-time classroom support for developing teachers," Berg said in a statement.

The Senate budget includes decreases to the state's personal income tax and corporate income tax. Those cuts have been projected to cause losses in revenue that would tighten future state budgets, including for the next two years.

The North Carolina Association of Educators, the state's largest school employee association, issued a statement opposing what they viewed as too small of an investment in education.

"The Senate budget prioritizes irresponsible tax cuts over our students, schools and public school families," NCAE President Tamika Walker Kelly said in a news release. The raises, she said, "won’t even match the rate of inflation."

Overall, the budget proposal would increase the Department of Public Instruction's general fund budget by $133.4 million next year and $434.7 million the year after, from $11.9 billion to just more than $12 billion next year and nearly $12.4 billion the year after.

Under the budget proposal, teachers would earn their scheduled "step" increase that comes with an additional year of experience, and each step would increase in value by 1.25% during the first year of the budget. Thousands of teachers don't earn step increases because the salary schedule flattens out at 15 years of experience, with just one pay bump scheduled at 25 years of experience. In the second year, the steps would not increase in value, allowing less-experienced teachers to earn a raise by moving up a step but leaving the most experienced teachers without a raise.

Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said he believed pay for the average teacher would top $62,000.

That's still below the national average, per the annual National Education Association's teacher salary report, as North Carolina chases other states that have also been raising teacher pay.

North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green offered neither praise nor criticism of the budget proposal when asked about his opinion on the spending proposal.

"This is the beginning of the budget process, and we look forward to working with legislators to ensure North Carolina public schools have the resources they need for students to achieve educational excellence," he said in a statement to WRAL.

The Senate's budget also proposes to: 

  • Provide $39.6 million in one-time dollars for school repair and renovation where schools were affected by Hurricane Helene.
    • Cut $14 million each year toward paying for students' advanced placement tests, reserving the remaining $4.7 million for economically disadvantaged students.
      • Cut a $1.5-million-per-year agreement between the state Department of Public Instruction and the College Board for the Advanced Placement Partnership. North Carolina was the only state with this type of partnership, which works to expand access to AP courses. Since that partnership was formed in 2014, enrollment in AP courses has grown to 97,137 students from 77,392 students in 2015. In 2024, 84,732 students took 155,935 AP exams. About two-thirds of those exams resulted in scores generally accepted for course credit at colleges.
        • Cut $1.8 million each year toward paying for students' international baccalaureate tests, reserving the remaining $500,000 for economically disadvantaged students.
          • Reduce the allotment for school district central office workers by 5%, from $110.5 million to $105 million.
            • Drop the funding for small specialty high schools, which were set to receive $1.8 million in the base budget.
              • Reduce State Superintendent Mo Green's $4.8 million budget for discretionary contracts to $2.8 million.
                • Cut the remaining $1.8 million of funding in a deal with Raleigh-based Plasma Games, which provided a grant to schools that wanted their students to learn math and science through a gaming platform. Declining interest from schools has led State Board of Education members to call the contract, which was required by state lawmakers in previous budgets, a waste.
                  • Eliminate two teacher recruitment services. That includes TeachNC, an online platform costing $980,000 per year and Future Teachers costing $278,000 per year. The Future Teachers program is run out of the University of North Carolina System.
                    • Increase funding for certain career and technical education programming, provided by SparkNC, by $3.5 million, including $500,000 to expand to middle schools.
                      • Increase lottery revenue would also result in more than $41 million in new building, repair and renovation projects in counties with relatively limited means to finance capital projects.