GREENVILLE, N.C. (WITN) – Teacher salaries and school funding are two big issues in the race for North Carolina governor. As we continue to look at this race this week, our focus tonight for Republicans Mark Robinson and Josh Stein is on public education.

When it comes to teacher salaries, the National Education Association ranks North Carolina 38th in the nation, with total teacher salaries at about $58,000, compared to about $72,000 nationally.

Gov. Roy Cooper has proposed an 8.5 percent pay raise for teachers. WITN asked Stein where his plan falls short in comparison. He said, “Well, first of all, we’re not going to solve this problem in a year, but we have to have a plan and a path to get there.” I think 8.5 percent makes sense in this climate, especially when inflation is around 3 percent. Currently, public servants and teachers are barely getting a raise to cover the costs of inflation.”

Robinson declined to comment on a proposed 8.5 percent increase in teacher salaries, saying he wanted to take teacher salaries in a different direction. He said: “What we need to do is take the entire education budget, find every piece of waste that doesn’t add value to teaching, and the very first thing we need to do is put those dollars into the columns and numbers that matter one to transfer.” is the teacher’s salary. So if we look at these options and look at how we can give teachers a raise, I think we can implement this quickly and get the result we want right away.”

North Carolina is at the bottom when it comes to school funding. Stein says the money is there to change that. “It’s a priority. Right now, lawmakers are more interested in taking money away from public schools and giving it to irresponsible private schools, to wealthy people who send their children to private schools. Parents who have never had their children in our public schools. My opinion on vouchers and this voucher system that the Republicans are pushing is that if we start spending money on private education, we can’t do it until we have met the basic standards of public education and ranked 49th in the country When it comes to financing efforts, the job is not enough. We don’t have enough school counselors. We don’t have enough school nurses, we don’t have enough school social workers. The professions that are truly critical to supporting the work of our educators to ensure they can focus on their important job of teaching children rather than caring for them.”

Robinson says properly funding schools isn’t about providing more money. “When we talk about dollars, I think the exact statistic is the $33.1 billion budget that we have here in North Carolina. Of that, we spend about 61 percent on public education, starting with higher education and continuing through recent years. I think what we need to do is not take some of this money out of the budget, but we need to redirect the dollars.”

Robinson says the money simply needs to be spent wisely. “It’s not about the money, it’s about where the money goes. Here too, efficiency is key.”

Stein said he believes the state has the money for teacher salaries and school funding, but lawmakers have not made it a sufficient priority. Robinson says the state not only needs to spend wisely, but also cut red tape and get rid of those that don’t add direct value to instruction.

On Wednesday at WITN News at Six, we’ll focus on economic issues and hear what the candidates have to say about those issues.

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