Teachers at dozens of schools across the state could walk out in protest of low teacher pay on Wednesday. It’s the second time in recent months that a statewide effort like this has been planned.
The latest walkout effort is being organized online by a new group, NC Teachers in Action.
The group says about 50 schools are slated to participate, mostly in Wake County. At least three schools are listed in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools – Paw Creek Elementary, Elon Park Elementary School and Governor’s Village STEM Academy.
“We've noticed, you know, obviously teachers have had issues for years now with as far as their salary, their income,” said Brandy Sanders, a leader at NC Teachers In Action and a Wake County teacher. “But it just seems that things just are progressively getting worse instead of better.”
Among other things, the group has several asks: it wants the state to restore master’s pay for teachers, fully fund the court-ordered Leandro plan, unfreeze step increases for veteran teachers and cap health insurance premiums.
“We are starting to notice that at least here in Wake County, some of the teachers are even turning to food banks to provide for their families,” Sanders said. “We have many, many teachers that work two, sometimes three jobs in order to make ends meet.”
The group is building off the momentum of an anonymous post made last November calling on teachers to walk out, which yielded scattered call-outs and other protests.
Sanders said the lack of organization stymied those efforts, even as teachers were enthusiastic about participating.
“We thought, okay, well, let's take this current momentum where teachers are feeling passionate about this situation and let's start doing something,” she said. “Let's start organizing.”
The goal is to hold monthly protests on the 7 of each month, building up to April 7, when the General Assembly is set to reconvene in Raleigh.
“I think that this first protest for January 7th on Wednesday is going to be just a stepping stone for what's to come and hopefully get the ball rolling even more and have more people participating,” Sanders said.
Many local chapters of the North Carolina Association of Educators had declined to endorse the last attempt to organize walkouts. CMAE told WFAE it was not involved in organizing these latest protests, and NCAE declined to comment.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools didn’t respond to a request for comment.
