Read teacher Joel Orr’s letter to the NC General Assembly. Joel taught high school English for six years and is currently enrolled full-time towards his Master’s of English.
Dear Members of the NC General Assembly,
I was flipping through bill 402 for some light reading, and I found three lines that struck me as rather important. Surely, these three lines weren’t buried within an over-400 page document in hopes they might just slide by, right? For your convenience, I copied and pasted the words below.
PHASE OUT CERTAIN TEACHER SALARY SUPPLEMENTS
SECTION 8.22. Notwithstanding Section 35.11 of this act, no teachers or instructional support personnel, except for school nurses, shall be paid on the “M” salary schedule or receive a salary supplement for academic preparation at the six-year degree level or at the doctoral degree level for the 2014-2015 school year, unless they were paid on that salary schedule or received that salary supplement prior to the 2014-2015 school year.
So, let’s just make sure we’re on the same page – this tiny section states that teachers who are not receiving master’s pay in the upcoming school year will not receive it in 2014-2015, no matter if they earn a master’s or Ph.D.
Meaning, if I may be so bold,
Teachers will not have fiscal inspiration to enroll in a master’s program or complete one currently in-progress. The bill isn’t saying they shouldn’t, of course – we can’t have that impression – it simply states that the debt taken on by enrolling in a master’s program won’t be paid back by a higher salary. This means teachers with higher education, some whom we could call “Doctor,” are as valuable to the state as 22 year olds with a bachelor’s degree.
Interesting.
Oh! And dear Members of the NC Legislature, I copied and pasted a few words from the state constitution. I will paste them below for your convenience.
Each Senator/Representative shall represent, as nearly as may be, an equal number of inhabitants, the number of inhabitants that each Senator represents being determined for this purpose by dividing the population of the district that he represents by the number of Senators apportioned to that district.
So, if I may,
The job of the Legislature is to represent the people of the state, broken into districts. Yes? Of course it is! We know this, because we learned it in elementary school! Some of us learned it in public elementary school, but don’t fret – we got our tetanus shots.