North Carolina's state budget is now nearly four months overdue. For public school employees, that means the school year started without a cost-of-living raise. WUNC is sharing stories of educators who are feeling financial strain from the policy issues playing out in the series "From Politics to Paychecks."
Inside her garage in her Mebane home, Michelle Reed opens a giant black trash bag filled with scrap metal. Reed says her two teenage daughters have been collecting it for years to sell.
"Here are vegetable cans from the week. The garage gets full and when it does, we take it and get the money and put it straight in the girls' savings accounts," said Reed, an English teacher at Cedar Ridge High.
Money has been tight in Reed’s family for a few years. North Carolina's salary schedule for teachers essentially freezes their pay when they hit 15 years of experience, and she's now in her 22nd year of teaching.
With inflation, that means her family has had to pare back, starting with gym memberships and streaming services.
"Now we feel like we've trimmed all the fat we can from our budget, and so now we're trying to be a little more creative," Reed said, like collecting that scrap metal to pay for her daughters' big trip with their school band.
She added: "It's really disheartening that after this long in education, that we are having to resort to things like that.”
Reed's husband has also been donating plasma, and plans to use the money from that to help pay for Christmas presents this year.
"He does it to be a good human because a person in our family benefits from plasma donations," Reed explained. "But in our conversations, when we're trying to figure out how to pay for the unexpected expenses, then he will kind of say, 'Well, I'll just go donate plasma again.' "
Rising healthcare premiums, and no budget mean "fewer dollars in our pocket"
Part of the family’s problem is that without a state budget, Reed doesn't expect any raise this year. Coupled with rising healthcare premiums and out-of-pocket costs for teachers on the state health plan, for Reed that means an effective pay cut.
"The state is actually causing us to lose money every month, like fewer dollars in our pocket," Reed said.
On the current salary schedule, North Carolina teachers are paid the same salary from years 15 through 24, except for very modest increases when the state passes a new budget. Reed said it's dismaying to think about.
"Not getting a raise for 10 years, that's a third of your career," Reed said.
In recent budgets, Reed said those cost-of-living raises from a new budget amounted to less than the cost of a tank of gas per month. And without a budget, it will be nothing.
The House's original budget proposal touted average teacher raises of up to about 9% over two years, while the Senate proposed an average 3% raise for teachers plus a bonus. But negotiations have stalled to the point that no budget is expected this year. And even if lawmakers did pass a budget, both proposals weighted raises toward young teachers, while averaging less for veterans.
"It's really frustrating because the news reports are all about what that average raise looks like, and I doubt the general public really knows that veteran teachers aren't getting anything," Reed said.
The financial strain is making her rethink whether she'll stay in teaching.
"Honestly, I never thought that after 22 years of teaching that we would financially be worse off than we've ever been before," Reed said.
If other veteran teachers leave the classroom for the same reasons, Reed believes it will be a huge loss for the younger teachers they mentor, and the students who benefit from their expertise.
