Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you
want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream,
my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron,
go to dpeakclendarshow dot com. Make sure you hit the
subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your
smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. And on Tuesdays we usually welcome to the
program Andrew Dunn. He is the publisher of long Leaf
Politics longleafpol dot com and also a contributing columnist to
The Charlotte Observer.
Speaker 2: Hey Andrew, how are you.
Speaker 3: I'm doing great. It's nice to be back.
Speaker 1: Yes, I appreciate you making time. As always, I was
reading through your latest over at the Observer that Republicans
are finally leading again on teacher pay. Lent over a
little bit of the details on this last week. This
proposal that comes from from Republican Aaron Parrey, is that
that you pronounce her name Parrey.
Speaker 2: It is yeah, okay, got it all right? Good?
Speaker 1: And so the idea is to take starting teacher pay
to fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: So walk us through sort of.
Speaker 1: And you do a good job of this in the
piece to explain like where we were ten years ago,
twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen time frame, and then what happened
at the legislative level. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Look, so you know, teacher pay has been a thorny
issue in North Carolina politics for decades under both Democrats
and Republicans. When Republicans came in, especially early on after
they took control of the General Assembly, there was a
lot of work around raising teacher pay and the legislator
legislators would kind of go back and forth. They'd raise
entry level teacher pay, and then they the next year
they'd go raise later career teacher pay, that sort of thing.
And you know what we saw is that North Carolina's
rankings really jumped from low forties to you know, depending
on how you slice it, either twenties or thirties, So
a very significant difference there. But then once Democrats broke
the supermajority and then Governor Cooper could sustain a veto,
basically all that progress more or less stagnated. Teacher pay
became caught up in the budget bills. Ever, getting vetoed
and so some years teachers didn't get any sort of
rais whatsoever. Other years it was relatively small. And then
it kind of just went away from the overall messaging.
You know, we started to hear a lot more about
school choice, about opportunity scholarships, and I don't want to
say that that wasn't good. I mean that was fantastic.
I think the legislature absolutely should have done that, but
you just didn't hear as much about public schools and
public school teacher pay. So basically the gist of the
column is that, you know, Republicans are getting back to
that previous era. They're leading on teacher pay and this
bill from Representative Paraye sounds like a really good start there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so, and to your point about how the
focus was, you know, a decade ago on rookie teachers
and then veteran teachers and such, they Republicans kept trying
to implement various kinds of I mean, I guess I
could call it merit based types of systems, right, versus
just the straight up longevity pay like Okay, you've been
here x amount of years that means you get this
amount of money. And they wanted to kind of break
up that model, but they ended up getting a lot
of pushback. I think they could even if Memory Service
they got sued to try to preserve some of those
those scales.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean the Teachers' Union is very much
against merit based pay. You know, there's always been a
lot of appetite for merit pay, but politically it's more challenging.
I think the appetite is still there to do it,
and I do think that this is a first step
towards getting towards moving in that direction. It's very strategic
to raise entry level teacher pay as opposed to later
career teacher pay, because you know, to kind of fill
the pipeline of new teachers, you really need to recruit
top teaching talent that's early on in their careers and
then you know, have them establish their careers here. So
I see this as a good first step and a
more strategic teacher pay framework. You know, you raise entry
level teacher pay and then you get you know, next
year or the year after, then you start talking about
more merit pay structures that can work.
Speaker 1: One of the challenges I've often had is whenever having
discussions about this topic, or on per pupil expenditures.
Speaker 2: Also, I always ask what the number is.
Speaker 1: Like, what's what's the optimal number that we need to spend?
And usually if I'm arguing with somebody on the left,
they don't want to They don't want to give me
a number. They don't want to give a figure, and
I don't know why that would be. They usually just
say something like, you know, take us to the national average,
and so does this I don't know, does this make
us at the national average? Would this take us closer
to the national average? If we started at fifty thousand dollars?
Speaker 3: Well, you know exactly why they don't want to throw
out number, because it's a political tool, right, Yeah, no, Matt.
If they throw at a number, then they can't you know,
whatever Republicans put out there, you know, seven eight nine percent,
whatever it is, you know, the Democrats are always going
to come back and say, well, that's not enough. It
needs to be eleven, thirteen percent, what have you. Because
it's purely a political tool. And that's why it's so
important to get out of that framework of only talking
about teacher pay in terms of what percentage increase we're
getting at. And I also think we need to get
out of the average teacher pay ranking discussion too. I mean,
it's somewhat useful, but your average teacher pay is always
going to be weighed down on you know, how many
younger teachers do you have in your state versus older teachers? Right,
And there's so many different ways to slice and dice
that data that it's not the most useful tool in
the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and cost of living is different state to state,
regions to regions, even in the same state, so it's yeah,
it's difficult to wait all of that appropriately. So I
highly recommend if you have the Charlotte Observer go check
out the piece Republicans are finally leading again on teacher
pay in North Carolina. Andrew, I would be remiss if
I didn't ask you. Did you see the Washington Post
article Trump vowed to help the North Carolina Mountains rebuild
after Helene frustration remain So, of course this article is
focused on Donald Trump and how he's failing western North Carolina.
But I thought there was I thought there was something
pretty interesting in sort of about I don't know, a
third of the way through the piece talking about how
the former governor Roy Cooper never appointed a disaster recovery
coordinator to take charge of communicating with federal agencies. And
this this was like shocking to the the disaster experts
that were interviewed at the Washington Post, and I found
it odd that that did not get the top billing.
Speaker 2: Will anybody care?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did see that article. Really remarkable article.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: The number one thing that jumped out to me. You know,
people shouldn't have to tweet at Elon Musk to get
disaster relief. That seems pretty clear. But yeah, I mean,
I think it's absolutely The lack of leadership is something
that I've been talking about for months. You know, the
failure in the Helene response wasn't just FEMA, it was
North Carolina's own leadership or lack thereof. I do think
it was a big miss for Cooper not to appoint
a recovery coordinator. I mean, one of the big things
that you kept hearing from former Governor Cooper in his
press conferences was, oh, well, it's really complicated. There's a
lot of moving parts. You know, There's that you know,
we were talking about how many missing people are there,
and he couldn't give an answer to how many missing
people there were, and he blamed, well, there's databases here
and databases there. I mean, that's exactly why you appoint
a coordinator, is to solve things like that. But of course,
you know, having that coordinator doesn't solve all the problems.
You know, you see, you know, Governor Stein has appointed
a disaster response coordinator, Matt Calabria, but honestly, I haven't
heard a word from him since he's gotten appointed, so
I'm not sure exactly what he's doing or where all
that stands. But just having somebody's name out there doesn't
solve all the problems, but at least at the first step.
Speaker 1: It is kind of amazing how much of a free
pass Roy Cooper has received on his inn aff effective
leadership when responding to natural disasters, whether it was Hurricane Matthew,
Hurricane Florence, or Helene, and even the pandemic, right, I mean,
like all of these examples, and it just seems like
he skates by. I'm sure you may have noticed something
along those lines as well when he was when he
was governor and you were working with Dan Forrest. So
like I'm I'm still kind of perplexed as to why
this doesn't get more attention.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I am as well. I mean, and there's some
theories I have on why that is a lot of it,
you know, especially in this context. You know, Helene hit
at the end of September in a presidential election year,
and the media is not going to go after a
top Biden Harris surrogate a month before election time. I
think we're starting to see the narrative change a little bit.
I think is a huge issue for Cooper if he
actually does want to run for US Senate. I have
a feeling that with you know, that amount of money
coming into the race, you know, till Us or who
you know it's going to be tillis most likely who
gets the Republican nomination is going to be able to
effectively prosecute that case, because that's the other component of its.
Republicans in North Carolina just haven't had enough money to
really drive home that message, especially going up against the
Cooper machine with you know, unprecedented millions of dollars to
run his own playbook.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Andrew Dunn, you could read his work at long
Leaf Politics longleafpol dot com. Also, he's a contributing columnist
over at Charlotte observer Andrew, thanks to you so much
for your time.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to
a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina.
Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of
Ashville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, honeymoon,
maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get
family and friends together for a big old reunion. Cabins
of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you
can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that
truly matter. Nestled within the breath taking fourteen thousand acres
of the Pisga National Forest, their cabins offer a serene
escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally
located between Ashville and the entrance of the Great Smoky
Mountain National Park. It's the perfect balance of seclusion and
proximity to all the local attractions with hot tubs, fireplaces,
air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi Fi grills, outdoor tables and
your own.
Speaker 2: Private covered porch. Choose from thirteen.
Speaker 1: Cabins, six cottages, two villas, and a great lodge with
eleven king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville has the ideal
spot for you for any occasion, and they have pet
friendly accommodations. Call or text eight two eight three, six,
seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is
to offer at cabins Offashville dot com and make memories
that'll last a lifetime. I've got couple of messages here,
one from John who says Number One, in the future,
anytime you are going to be out without prior notice,
you need to send me a personal email or text
message at least one hour prior to the start of
the show so I can be mentally prepared for your absence. John,
That's not going to happen.
Speaker 2: Number two.
Speaker 1: The Republicans have controlled the General Assembly now for fourteen years.
School teachers have not received a pay raise six years
or had not received a pay raise six years prior
to that, so any teacher pay raises in the last
twenty years have come from the Republican led General Assembly.
Yet the Democrat Teachers Union only protest Republicans over the pay.
They never had their moral Monday marches on or anything
like that under the Democrats control. Even when Governor bev
perdue forced them to take the unpaid furlough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that always.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I focused a lot on that when I was
up in working you know, up in Asheville at the
time when the Momo mo began.
Speaker 2: And uh, there were a couple of reasons for it.
Speaker 1: You know, at the time, you had a hollowed out
North Carolina Democrat Party didn't really have any leaders, they
had no figurehead. They had been just embroiled in multiple
corruption scandals and illegal activities. A bunch of their people
got you know, charged with crimes and went to jail,
and so it was a it was a husk of
a party.
Speaker 2: Uh. And in Walks Uh, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Reverend William Barber and he he galvanizes these activists
inside the Democrat Party, but also teachers.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's why the the protest marches were so well
attended at the beginning was because of the years of
prior to Pat McCrory becoming governor, prior to the Republicans
taking over the legislature, you had Democrat control. And yes,
they furloughed teachers, they gave them, they froze their pay
because they had you know, they had budgeted recklessly and
they ended up with structural deficits and they couldn't afford
to keep paying when the downturn came around, you know,
nine timeframe, and that's what ushered in the Republicans' victories
in twenty ten, and the teachers still hadn't gotten pay raises.
But the Republican legislature was trying to fix these structural deficits,
and so the first thing they had to do was
shore up the revenue. They had to you know, enact
their tax reforms that they could, and they did it
over time, and people wanted it to move faster, and
Barber was able to motivate teachers to march on Raleigh,
and as soon as the Republicans started doing teacher pay increases,
the protests trickled down to very few numbers because they
didn't have all of the motivated teachers that were now attending.
So that's where we were a decade ago. People new
to the state probably are unaware of that. You know,
stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things,
to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of
our past while transcending generations. They help us process the
meaning of life, and our stories are told through images
and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video, started in
nineteen ninety seven in Minhill, North Carolina. It was the
first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos
and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums.
The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will
go over all of the details with you to create
a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person
or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two.
Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas,
family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories, all told
through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They
are your life told through the eyes of everyone around
you and all who came before you, and they will
tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video
dot com. I got a message on Twitter from Bubba
who says it's a Pete tweet. He says, great conversation
about teachers pay. Did I miss the information about post
graduate degree pay or no? When will this be looked at?
As of now, the only incentive is to become nationally
bored certified.
Speaker 2: Nothing though for masters degrees, so we did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about this last week when the bill
first was filed. And you've got the the raising of
the teacher pay starting at five grand. This is free
ten month salary, so you know, five grand per month.
That's fifty thousand dollars for a ten month salary. That's
the first part. Licensed teachers who have the National Board
certified standing they should they shall receive a salary supplement
each month of twelve percent of their monthly salary, so
that's a twelve percent In addition, ad and then licensed
teachers who are classified as m masters I assume shall
receive a salary supplement of ten percent of their monthly salary.
And then it breaks down some of the numbers.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: By the way, this is House Bill one ninety two,
and you can look it up on the legislature's website
and see led dot gov.
Speaker 2: Again, that's House Bill one ninety two.
Speaker 1: Now, Andrew Dunn, who we spoke with at the beginning
of the hour, in this piece at the Charlotte Observer
and well in the News and Observer, the McClatchy papers,
he describes the bill as raising teacher paid a fifty
thousand dollars that would be up from where the starting
pay currently is now that's forty one thousands, So this
is a nine thousand dollars increase in starting teacher pay.
And if I remember correctly, when they raised the rookie
teacher pay, the probably about ten years ago. When they
did that, they were attacked. The Republicans were attacked for
only focusing on the new hires and we need to
focus on the veteran teachers.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There was that attack, but then there was also this
this ignoring of how raising the base pay for the
new hires creates creates more wealth in the long term
because you're now you're getting this large salary, and fifty
thousand dollars a year is a large salary for somebody
with no experience. Okay, right out of school. Fifty k
that's a good job. Right, that's a good salary, plus
you get the benefits. So there is also this compounding
effect that occurs over years, right, because fifty thousand this year,
and then the next year you would go to fifty
ninety one. Then the years of experience fifty one, eighty three,
fifty two, seventy four, right, and so it just keeps
on stacking on top.
Speaker 2: It's a one.
Speaker 1: Point six billion dollar total plan, and it would put
North Carolina among the most competitive states in the country
for new teachers. Even Democrats admit it would be a
strong move. Andrew Dunn says, will it be enough to
change the conversation? I me personally, I'm gonna say no.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say no that now.
Speaker 1: This issue is too important for Democrats to demagogue. So
I'm sure they will find you some argument to be
made that it has to be even more. North Carolina
would leap frog states like New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut
to land among the top ten nationally and starting pay
and first in the Southeast by far.
Speaker 2: That's a big deal.
Speaker 1: For recruitment, especially when twenty three percent of the state's
education graduates don't take teaching jobs in North Carolina within
two years. So this is an interesting data point. I'm
curious though, if that if some of that is due
to starting of families, right, do they not take Do
the new graduates not take jobs because they are having kids, right,
and then they go to then they go into the
workforce later, or do they go back to their home
states or do they go to a different state that's
paying more. A lot of different data points inside of that.
The average starting salary for a UNC Chapel Hill graduate
is fifty eight thousand dollars the average starting salary. But
if you look at he says, NC State Humanities majors,
they average forty seven thousand. An English major averages just
thirty seven thousand. Right, So what's driving those average starting salaries?
I would guess it's probably your engineering, your science, technology,
engineering math. Right at ten years postgraduation, the average salary
for a UNC system graduate is sixty thousand dollars, while
Liberal arts majors make about forty seven thousand dollars. So
under this plan, a teacher in a tip North Carolina
school district would also make sixty k after ten years,
which would be right in line with other professional careers.
So does this take the issue off the table? Republicans
do this? And Andrew makes the argument that this will
break the cycle, This will break this cycle, that the
teacher pay debate has been stuck in this loop for
a decade, and he thinks that this might do the trick.
All right, if you're listening to this show, you know,
I try to keep up with all sorts of current events,
and I know you do too, and you've probably heard
me say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well,
because it's how you detect media bias, which is why
I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app
and it's a website and it combines news from around
the world in one place so you can compare coverage
and verify information. You can check it out at check
dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link
in the podcast description too. I started using ground News
a few months ago and more recently chose to work
with them as an affiliate because it lets me see
clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind
spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the
left and the right. See for yourself check dot ground,
dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll
get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage
plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription
then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports
ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent.
So Andrew Dunn, writing at The Charlotte Observer in his
op ed and look, I just want to point out here.
We used to have Andrew on the show long before
he got all famous and.
Speaker 2: Got his.
Speaker 1: Op ed contributorship over at The Observer, and so we
we love the fact that that he's writing, you know,
and he's got a wider platform to do this on.
But he's talking here about this, uh, this plan to
raise teacher pay. And if you are new to the
state or you hadn't paid attention to what occurred in
North Carolina politics specifically when it comes to education ten
years ago, you know, you may think, and there are
I encounter people all the time that they have no
idea the damage that the the Democrats had done when
they were in charge because of the the way that
they budgeted and they kept on spending and spending and spending.
They took one time money used it for ongoing operations
like for salaries and such, and then they ran out
of money and they had to they had to furlough people,
They had to do a step pay raise freeze, so
people that were supposed to get and they had them
all set up in these weird per mutations where it
was like, you know, your first year you get like
a ten percent raise, and then year three another rays
of a smaller amount. Year four, another rays of a
higher amount than year seven. It's just like weird years
and then weird percentage bumps and stuff. So they had
all these different steps that were just kind of all
over the place, and they froze those and it generated
a lot of anger towards Democrats. Republicans came in. They
cleaned up the the books, right. You also had the
problems with the Medicaid they had. They had to clean
those books up. They had to clean up the unemployment
insurance books. We owed something like three billion dollars to
the federal government for unemployment insurance benefits that we were
paying out. We had the high we had like some
of the highest unemployment benefits in America. And then we
had to take loans from the federal government to keep
paying them out. And so Republicans came back, came in,
and they slashed the rates, they paid back the debt,
They got us debt free. So there was a lot
to clean up after a century and a half of
Democrat control. And you know media and Democrats, but I
repeat myself, they were not too patient, right. And meanwhile,
predicting all sorts of catastrophe would occur if the Republicans
did their tax reforms and such. Of course, what we
have now seen after a decade of or a decade
and a half of Republicans in control in Raleigh, we
have seen surpluses. We've seen the Rainy Day Fund funded,
we have seen school vouchers funded, we've seen Medicaid expanded.
Now and now they're talking about raising teachers, starting teacher
pay at fifty thousand dollars a year. And so what
Andrew done then says, is that Democrats have a choice.
They have spent years demanding higher teacher pay, and now
that Republicans have put forward a real plan, can we
move on from debating how much is enough? North Carolina
can keep replaying the same tired teacher pay debate, or
finally build a system that rewards and retains great teachers.
It's time to start making real progress. So here's my hope,
because this is you know what I have said whenever
we talk about teacher pay, I always say the same
thing that I think great teachers should get paid way
more money, but I refuse to pay the bad ones
the same amount. And so if this is what it
takes now to get Democrats to move off of their
opposition to a merit based type of a system.
Speaker 2: You're going to say.
Speaker 1: Everybody gets fifty thousand dollars And I don't know where
this is going either, by the way, so like this
may not even bear fruit, but this would be the
time to do it right. I feel like, if you're
going to do this bill and you're going to raise
all of the teacher pay, then there needs to be
some sort of a merit component into this. So this
way we don't end up having to pay the bad
teachers the exact same amount as we're paying the great
teachers simply because they managed to not get fired.
Speaker 2: Over the course of their career. All right, that'll do
it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. I could not do
the show without your support and the support of the
businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like,
please support them too and tell them you heard it here.
You can also become a patron at my Patreon page
or go to thepetecallanershow dot com. Again, thank you so
much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.