After Notable Wins, Can NCAE Make the Case for Public Education?

The auditorium at Athens Drive Magnet High School in Raleigh buzzed with anticipation last July as members of the North Carolina Association of Educators scattered across the room bearing large pads of paper and pens. Representatives from local chapters huddled to brainstorm how they would strengthen their ranks by adding members and, more importantly, how they could make public education an inescapable issue in the 2024 election.

For NCAE members, summer wasn’t so much a break as a chance to strategize and increase visibility. The annual Summer Leaders gathering, a weeklong event where members can debrief on their achievements, celebrate big wins, and collaborate with other locals before the fall was a key chance to do that in person.

Last summer’s meeting had a heightened sense of urgency. NCAE set their sights on three consequential statewide candidates in the 2024 election: Josh Stein, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate; Mo Green, the Democrat running for state superintendent of public instruction; and Allison Riggs, the Democrat running to maintain her seat on the state Supreme Court. Without allies in these offices, they feared an uphill battle on education policy in the state. Whether they could help elect Stein, Green, and Riggs was a key test of their strategy. 

Stein’s opponent, Mark Robinson, routinely called public schools “indoctrination centers” on the campaign trail. The Republican nominee for state superintendent, Michele Morrow, was a homeschool parent who deemed public schools “the indoctrination army of the socialist dems.” Green, meanwhile, previously served as superintendent of Guilford County Schools—the third largest district in North Carolina with more than 70,000 students. On the campaign trail, Green said “the very soul of public education is on the ballot”—a sentiment NCAE certainly shared.

The outcome of the state Supreme Court race, still up in the air months later, will likely also impact decisions on issues like redistricting and the future of Leandro, a 1997 court ruling that says the state is obligated to provide a “sound, basic education” for every child. Republicans currently hold a 5-2 majority; a Riggs loss would be a setback.

At Summer Leaders, NCAE leadership stood at the head of the high school auditorium as the faces of visionary civil rights leaders and labor rights activists like Marshall Ganz and Ella Baker flashed across the projector screen. Speakers invoked labor movements of old to inspire the crowd of eager organizers who hooted, hollered, and jeered as leadership laid out the organization’s six-year electoral plan.

The plan seems to have worked for 2024; should Riggs hold off Griffin’s attempt to throw out ballots, the union will have gone three for three on key races in 2024. As a bonus, the Democrats broke the congressional supermajority, ending Republicans’ ability to override the governor’s veto. 

Public education advocates now have a formidable base of allies at the highest levels of state government. But the question remains: What kind of political power can NCAE yield to make the case for public education?

Changing The Course

For decades, funding public education was a bipartisan priority, led by longtime Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt, the son of a schoolteacher. In 1970, public education funding amounted to just over half the state’s general fund at 52.5 percent. Business leaders, in particular, saw public schools as a crucial talent pipeline.

“Hunt was really successful in weaving together the importance of public education to economic development,” said Geoff Coltrane, senior director of government affairs and strategy at the NC Department of Public Instruction. “And there were a lot of business leaders who stood beside Gov. Hunt on that.”

But when the Great Recession hit, states had to make hard decisions about where to adjust their budgets, Coltrane said. At the same time, the North Carolina House and Senate flipped in 2011 from majority Democrat to Republican, leading to a shift in the legislative priorities.

One of their priorities was expanding the state’s charter school program. Charter schools are publicly funded, but have their own leadership structure outside the local district. While they are still accountable for student performance and spending, they are given more flexibility on how they achieve those outcomes, Coltrane said. In the 1990s, state officials capped the total number of charter schools in North Carolina at 100. After Republicans assumed all three branches of government in 2013, the cap was lifted and the state now has roughly 220 schools.

“The pitch was that they were intended to be sort of like laboratories of innovation,” Coltrane said. “I think the vision was that what’s learned in these charter schools could potentially be transferred over to help public schools improve. So it was intended to help support the public education system overall.”

But that hasn’t really happened, he said. Instead, many feel like the growth of charters has put them in competition with other public schools for both students and resources.

Since the 2011-12 school year, average per-pupil spending has increased by nearly $2,000. About 10 percent of students in public schools here now attend a charter. 

At the same time, more state money is flowing to private schools through the state’s Opportunity Scholarship program, often called school-choice vouchers. Legislators vastly expanded the program last year, making vouchers available to families of any income level to cover private school tuition. So far, over $463 million has been allocated to roughly 55,000 students—an amount that is expected to cut into the per-pupil spending of public schools as they lose students. 

Bryan Proffitt, a teacher and political organizer, has been fighting this trend for two decades. Proffitt was elected president of Durham County’s NCAE chapter, Durham Association of Educators (DAE), in 2015 and joined state leadership in 2019 when he was elected NCAE vice president.

The trend toward private and charters is creating instability for students and families, he said. “When you privatize and let the markets choose, you have constant volatility,” he said. “The market isn’t a stabilizing force, it’s a volatile force.” 

Take the example of New Orleans, where the entire system is now charter schools. Students are constantly at risk of being forced to change schools if their charter isn’t renewed. “You’d have a charter pop up, and then six months later, that charter would shut down, and those students get distributed someplace else,” Proffitt said. “And then that place shuts down in another six months.” Now the city is rebuilding a unified public school district.

Pay freezes and staffing shortages have also contributed to frustration and turnover. The average teacher salary has only grown from $46,700 in 2011 to $58,592 in 2024, slightly exceeding increases in the cost of living. Attrition is also a concern; according to the Department of Public Instruction, 11.5 percent of teachers left their role in 2024. 

The concerns have given rise to a new generation of leadership at NCAE. Tamika Walker Kelly, an elementary school music teacher in Cumberland County, was elected NCAE president in 2020 amid peaked battles over pandemic-era closures and increasingly tight budgets. 

“We know educators are not leaving the profession because they don’t want to be educators,” Walker Kelly said. “It’s because of the conditions that exist here in the state of North Carolina.”

Walker Kelly, Proffitt, and the new leadership wanted to take the fight to the legislature, and Summer Leaders, launched in 2020, was among their new initiatives. The program aimed to empower members to see themselves as having a role to play in the future of education.

“The first part was the shift in purpose,” Proffitt said. “We have to shift the philosophy and process. So we’re going to talk about power, and we’re going to talk about organizing rather than service.”

The 2024 Summer Leaders brought together 110 members representing 21 local chapters. NCAE encourages any member from the locals to participate in Summer Leaders, not just leadership, so the members can develop a stronger capacity for political organizing and recruitment.

Statewide, NCAE membership has grown 33 percent since 2021. That growth comes despite the fact that overall union membership in the state is at a paltry 2.6 percent. In North Carolina, municipal employees at the city, county, and state levels aren’t restricted from participating in union activity, but they are legally prohibited from collectively bargaining for a contract.

At Summer Leaders, participants receive training and support from NCAE staff and members on how to recruit new members and effectively communicate their asks—like increased funding and professional development resources—to their community and local government. Everyone is expected to “leave with a plan,” Proffitt said, for how they’d recruit and grow their local chapter. 

Durham Flexes Its Muscle

In Durham, the local chapter tested its political heft last year after a wage dispute caused a firestorm. The district had issued raises to classified employees after a compensation study recommended more equitable pay, but just months later, the district said it was unable to fulfill the adjusted salaries. 

The ensuing outcry ignited a surge in organizing and advocacy for DAE, which eventually won a historic $27 million from Durham County for increased staff pay and a stronger budget supplement in the 2024–25 school budget. DAE nearly tripled its membership amid the fight, from 880 in 2023 to 2,600 by last May. 

Heading into Summer Leaders last year, DAE had certainly raised the bar for other locals.

“We had it all sketched out,” said DAE president Mika Hunter Twietmeyer. “We had maybe six field organizers in Durham last year, just meeting with members in schools, meeting with non-members in schools, talking to them. A lot of people didn’t even know DAE existed, especially in some buildings that didn’t have a lot of members at all.”

The pay dispute was a timely target, but Twietmeyer said they’d already had ambitious plans.

“I don’t think our strategy would have changed,” Twietmeyer said, noting that they were already seeing more people signing up to be involved. DAE now represents more than 50 percent of public school educators in the school system. 

But that milestone was not reached overnight. Patience and consistency have been key to success, Walker Kelly said It’s a long game.

“It does take time, effort, and work in order to be able to be in a position to enact change, to leverage relationships with school board members, with county commissioners, and with the general public, which are all very important entities in ensuring that public education is successful in your county,” said Walker Kelly.

Schools in Guilford County faced similar challenges over pay and funding. “There was a lot of injustice baked into the system, and that was our district’s fault,” said Joanna Pendleton, president of Guilford County Association of Educators and an educator there for over 20 years. GCAE worked on a successful year-long campaign to convince the school district to change the pay scale for classified workers, which went into effect at the start of the 2023–24 school year. Pendleton called it a “major victory.”

Since 2021, GCAE has added 138 new members to their ranks—a sign, they hope, that is indicative of enthusiasm for collective action.

“There is a gap, and the state, instead of closing the gap, is siphoning millions, and eventually billions more dollars off into voucher expansion for even the wealthiest families in North Carolina,” Pendleton said. “And we are stuck here begging for crumbs.”

Pendleton believes the voucher program is an opportunity for NCAE to connect with voters, especially families in rural areas. 

“Folks in rural communities love their public schools, and need their public schools,” Pendleton said. “They don’t have any private and charter schools to send their kids to as an alternative.”

“Those constituents can really call the shots with some of these Republicans who are doing things that are not in the best interest of their community around public schools,” she continued. 

Forward Momentum 

Last January, Gov. Roy Cooper declared 2024 the “Year of the Public Schools” in a press conference at his former elementary school in Nash County, and touted his efforts to bring Republicans around on the issue.

“I came into office eight years ago hoping to reach consensus with them about the importance of public education, and we have made some progress,” Cooper told the audience. Lawmakers have found some common ground on revamping how the state educates its teachers on K–12 reading comprehension, but fights still loom over issues like teacher salaries and vouchers. 

Coltrane, who served as Senior Education Adviser under Cooper, says North Carolina has a “long history of dedication to, and understanding the importance of, public education.” For state policymakers, it’s not about whether to invest in education, Coltrane says. It’s about how.

NCAE members like Pendleton see the next four years as a time to aggressively push their agenda. They hope they’ll even have “a chance at playing a little bit of offense, rather than always, always defense,” Pendleton said.

“When it comes to our public schools, it’s a bipartisan issue,” said Walker Kelly. “We are open to welcoming more allies into the work, because at the end of the day, the most important thing is making sure that kids are able to be successful and that they have what they need in order to thrive in their communities and across our state.”

NCAE is also taking the fight to the national stage. Walker Kelly and several others joined hundreds of education advocates in Washington, D.C. on February 13 to protest the confirmation of Education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon and lobby Congress over concerns about the Trump administration’s education plans.

“Everyone is talking about the impending dismantling of the Department of Education and so we’re trying to really advocate with our congressmen and our North Carolina delegation about how critical the functions of the Department of Education are for students,” Walker Kelly said.

On the heels of the local wins, NCAE believes it has the momentum to dream big. The organization has 118 chapters, including at least one in every county. A surge in membership activity gave NCAE more power to execute a noteworthy electoral campaign in North Carolina.

Walker Kelly says the organization remains focused on working with Stein, Green, and other elected officials to “ensure that our priorities and action are focused on.”

“This is a moment where what was presented to voters was a pretty stark choice, and more decided to choose the one that wants to have a bit more of a positive way of going forward that recognizes the champions of public education and celebrates the good in public education and reveres educators,” said Green said during a virtual press conference following the election.

Proffitt believes the election results speak for themselves; Donald Trump may have won North Carolina, but voters still elected Democrats in key races dealing with public education.

“I think there was a clear referendum in the election on the question of what should be the orientation of government towards public schools. Should it be one of defamation and criticism, or should it be one of like, these are places we want to invest in?” Proffit says. “This is where our kids are.”

Correction: The name of the school in the lede of this story has been corrected. It is Athens Drive Magnet High School.

Justin Laidlaw is a staff reporter at INDY Week. You can follow him on X or reach him by email at jlaidlaw@indyweek.com.