(The Center Square) – North Carolina public school administrators made a pitch Monday for changes in their salary structure, including paying more for those who lead schools with greater challenges such as poverty and non-English speaking students.
Principal salaries range from $90,631 to $113,000. The North Carolina Association of School Administrators proposed to a committee on education reform in the House of Representatives changes of $91,121.23 to $116,296.
Representatives for principals also suggested changing the factors used to determine salaries to be tied to the ”complexity” of the school in addition to student academic performance. Proposed retention bonuses would encourage principals to remain in their jobs longer rather than taking posts at central offices.
The only factor related to a school’s complexity that is considered in the principal’s salary is the number of students at the school, Ashley Faulkenberry, principal of Trent Park Elementary in New Bern told the committee.
“I currently work at a school that has approximately 400 students,” she told the Select Committee on Education Reform. “All schools of 400 are not created equal.”
Factors that vary by school include the number of economically disadvantaged and homeless students and those who struggle with English, Faulkenberry said.
“My school, out of the 400, 120 of my students are considered multi-language students,” she told the legislators. “They are not only multi-language learners, they also fall under the refugee demographic. We have 27 different birth nations at my school and 16 different languages. It can be challenging from day to day when a lot of those are dialects that you cannot get on Google translate.”
All of the students Faulkenberry’s school receive free or reduced priced lunch, she said.
“This is very different from a school that would be considered affluent, where many of the students come in proficient and there are no multi-language learners,” she said. “This is a totally different way of doing business.”
Her students required more time and more effort to meet their needs, Faulkenberry added.
“More complex schools equals high stress, higher burnout and less stability for schools,” she said. “Simply put, more complex schools are more difficult to lead.”
The salary proposal deserves to be studied, said Rep. Brian Biggs, R-Randolph.
“A lot of times, every school is not equal,” he said. “Challenges are different.”
As a former school board member, he said it was often difficult to find principals for more challenging schools.
“We find great people, we find superstars,” he said. “Sometimes grades don’t show how great they are because they are in a challenging situation. A lot of principals who are in this situation are superstars, but they aren’t getting paid like they are superstars.”
