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Twenty low-wealth school districts – including the Alamance-Burlington School System – could be penalized $37 million due to a difference in interpretation about how to use state funding to boost teacher pay.
The 20 districts were among the North Carolina public schools that received $100 million in new state funding in 2021 to boost the pay of teachers.
But the districts didn’t follow the legislature’s requirements about not using state funds to replace local dollars for teacher salary supplements, according to a report adopted redently by the State Board of Education.
The state board has asked that state lawmakers modify the law so that those poor districts aren’t penalized. Any potential relief could come in this year’s state budget.
The state pays the base salaries for most teachers. School districts often use local and federal funds to supplement the salaries.
In addition, school districts that qualify for low-wealth funding from the state also can use that money to pay teachers.
In 2021, the General Assembly created a new state-funded salary supplement for teachers. The pot has risen to $170 million this school year.
In return for the new state funding, school districts are to use it “to supplement and not supplant non-state funds provided for salary supplements for teachers.”
The state Department of Public Instruction interpreted it to mean that districts are required to maintain the same level of salary supplement expenditures from local and federal funds, DPI Chief Financial Officer Alexis Schauss said.
Schauss said the 20 districts used the new state funding to increase pay for teachers, but she said they also replaced some of the local money used for teacher salaries with funding from the state’s low-wealth supplemental fund.
The 20 districts differed with DPI’s interpretation of the law. But both the House and Senate budgets side with DPI’s interpretation.
The state board was supposed to send to the General Assembly by April a report on how schools have used the new state teacher salary supplement. But the report was delayed as DPI tried to resolve the issue with the school districts.
It would cost the districts a combined $6.6 million to revise their budgets to stay in compliance with state law.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
