(The Center Square) – School districts among North Carolina’s 115 that are taking Friday off due to teachers attending a rally in Raleigh meant to grab lawmakers’ attention has increased, even if the reason to be there isn’t “a news flash” or likely “to move the needle” for the legislators.
Kids Over Corporations Rally, organized by the North Carolina Association of Educators, will rally teachers around the Halifax Mall between the capitol and the Legislative Building on Jones Street. Funding for public schools, better teacher pay and an end to universal school choice are being championed by the NCAE, an organization not formally a union but every bit as much aligned with the National Education Association led by President Becky Pringle and the American Federation of Teachers led by President Randi Weingarten.
“My concern is for the parents who have to make special arrangements for their children because the teachers refuse to work on a day that they are supposed to work,” Sen. Phil Berger said. “I don’t think there’s any question, everybody is in agreement, to the extent that we have the capacity, we need to work on paying teachers more and funding education at a higher level. If you look at the last 15 years, that’s what you’ve seen year after year after year, we’ve done that.
“So, I don’t know that there’s any news flash that that is something that is a priority in this General Assembly as it has been for the past decade and a half.”
In the negotiation of a state budget late for its July 1 implementation, the House of Representatives has a higher teacher pay raise than the Senate on average – 8.7% to 3.3% – over the two-year plan. The charted rate of decline for personal income tax is another major sticking point.
Berger, R-Rockingham, is president pro tempore of the upper chamber, and Rep. Destin Hall, R-Caldwell, is speaker of the House.
“The House has worked very hard this session to get raises for teachers as we’ve always done, especially this session,” Hall said. “Overwhelmingly, most teachers will be at work on Friday. The group that is putting that on doesn’t spend the time they should on teachers’ pay raises; they’re more worried about the other left-wing political interests.
“Folks are welcome to come to whatever rally that they want to but I don’t know that that particular group is going to do anything to move the needle. What I would tell the overwhelming majority of teachers who will be at work on Friday, at some point, call their senator and tell them to approve the House budget. That’s the best way for them to get a pay raise.”
Stein had a 5.8% average pay raise initially. He’s since upped it to 11%.
The NCAE wants 25% across the board. The NCAE wants corporate tax cuts stopped, and education funding increased. President Tamike Walker calls Friday a “line in the sand.”
The NCAE said Tuesday 15 districts were shuttering classes to support the rally. That group includes Alamance County, Asheville City, Buncombe County, Chapel Hill-Carrboro, Chatham County, Durham, Guilford County, Winston-Salem/Forsyth, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Mooresville City, Kannapolis City, Pitt County, Orange County, Gaston County and Whiteville City.
Since then, according to published reports, Cabarrus County, Cumberland County, Nash County and Edgecombe County have taken similar action. In some places, like Wake County and Brunswick County, the calendar already had students out before the rally was planned.
The state’s largest school systems, either by scheduling previously or changing, are out on Friday – Wake County Public School System (about 161,000 students), Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (about 141,000 students), Guilford County Schools (about 66,000 students), Winston-Salem/Forsyth (about 50,000 students) and Cumberland County (about 49,000 students) are the top five.
First-term Democratic state Superintendent Mo Green on Wednesday said, “The concerns being raised by educators are concerns I share: low pay, inadequate funding, the need for support staff and resources.”
He cited a ranking of No. 50 from the Making the Grade report and said, “That ranking is not where North Carolina should be, given our economic strength, our talent and our potential.”
The ranking is published by the Education Law Center, an organization funded by the two major teachers’ unions and other private and corporate foundations.
State population has risen from 10.4 million at the turn of the decade to an estimated 11.2 million. Only Florida and Texas have higher growth. Republicans leading tax reform has consistently been cited as a major factor; in 2023, they pushed through universal school choice and even managed to fund it, erasing a waiting list of 55,000 who craved the popular option.
Charlotte (70,000) and Raleigh (32,000) have led 10 municipalities growing by 10,000 or more in the first five years of this decade.
The NCAE, according to a 2023 report from the state auditor’s office, has 25,679 members. Analysis as recent as 2025 has reported the membership – the organization chooses as it is able to keep it secret – at about 17,500, all of which are down from an estimated 50,000 in 2011.
That is, whether by coincidence, the same year Republicans for the first time in 140 years seized majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly.
Roughly 90,000 educators work in the state’s public schools.
The attrition rate for teachers in 2024-25 rose from 9.88% to 11.11%, according to a report provided earlier this year to the Department of Public Instruction. Prior to the COVID-19 era, the norm was 7.5% to 8.2%.
North Carolina has an estimated 1.5 million schoolchildren in its 11.2 million population.
Spending on education was the largest share of the last state budget at $17.9 billion for 2024-25, and $17.3 million for the 2023-24 portion of the $60.7 billion two-year plan, the most recent passed.
