CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The North Carolina General Assembly has passed a budget that includes billions of dollars for education.
The new budget includes more than just money. It also includes legislation, without dollars attached to it, that will increase the number of teachers in the classroom.
The General Assembly has made it easier for out-of-state teachers to gain their North Carolina teaching licenses.
Teacher license reciprocity allows teachers who hold an out-of-state license to earn a license in North Carolina. Teachers were subject to meeting some requirements, but the process was easier than going through the licensing requirements of new teachers with no previous experience. North Carolina only allowed for reciprocity with a limited number of states.
The new provision now says a teacher can be granted a North Carolina teaching license if they are licensed in another state with substantially similar licensure requirements, have at least three years of teaching experience and are in good standing with the other state.
In addition, teachers at schools with at least 10% of students identified as “at-risk” of academic failure or dropout would be able to get National Board of Professional Teaching Standards certification for free. The certification can cost teachers more than $1,000. The state pays 12% more in annual base pay to teachers with the certification.
There are other portions of the budget with allocations attached.
For example, a new teacher apprentice program would allow high school graduates to work in schools as apprentices while earning their education degrees.
The efforts are welcome due to a statewide teacher shortage impacting local districts like Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. At the start of the school year, CMS had about 500 vacancies.
The vacancies vary by school. One school may have three vacancies while another could have 10.
At Pineville Elementary School, there’s only one teacher vacancy, a number the principal is grateful for. Pineville Elementary School Principal Bobby French said having strong teachers in the classroom is why his students are thriving.
"We've had to really be intentional about focusing on student data, looking at where students are and what skills they might be missing, pulling them into small groups and intentionally focusing on those skills," French said.
Over the last school year, Pineville Elementary went up a letter grade in student performance and their students exceeded growth.
"Our districts set some goals around our Hispanic and African American population specifically and making sure that they were proficient by third grade and reading," French said. "we saw a huge jump in that this year, our Hispanic population went up about 20%, and their proficiency as well as our African American population."
French said without long-term and highly qualified teachers that wouldn’t have happened.
"Teachers support one another," French said. "They pick each other up on a hard day and they help one another every day. So they want to be here. They want to help one another."
The new budget also expands the state’s Teaching Fellows program. The program gives future loan forgiveness and training for people wanting to be a teacher The program will be offered to students at two more universities in North Carolina.
In addition, there is a new grant program being started to allow teacher assistants to attend college to become full-time teachers in the state.
Contact Shamarria Morrison at smorrison@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, X and Instagram.