Small bonuses show CMS doesn’t understand the gravity of the teacher exodus
On the way to school recently, my sixth grade daughter asked a heartbreaking question: “I wonder who will be the next to leave.”
She’d just learned of the loss of the second of her eight teachers in a month.
Her school is actually one of the more stable schools in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district, which is currently experiencing a full blown staffing crisis. Olympic High School has lost 25 educators since the beginning of this school year.
As of Dec. 7, a jaw-dropping 871 CMS teachers had resigned or retired. That’s nearly 10% of our total teacher workforce.
Across the district, far too many students are sitting in classrooms they don’t belong in with no assignments to do, watching YouTube on their Chromebooks and waiting for the bell to ring. It’s not hard to imagine the academic impact on students.
I’ve spoken with some of the teachers we’ve lost, and their reasons for leaving include the stress of teaching during the pandemic, the unsustainable workload they’re shouldering due to the staffing shortage and a new literacy training which requires elementary teachers to undergo 80 hours of training this year alone, and low pay.
The solution to low pay is increased salaries. That’s primarily the responsibility of N.C. legislators, who recently showed their backwards priorities yet again by passing raises averaging 1.3% for each of the next two school years while phasing out corporate income taxes, ensuring that money for public education will be even harder to come by in the future.
Against this backdrop, the CMS Board held an emergency meeting last week to approve a proposal to use $48 million of its $317.5 million in federal ESSER III funds for an “employee retention incentive.” The incentives amount to $2,500 for full-time employees, $1,250 for part-time. Half of the bonus will be paid before the holidays, the other half in Sept. 2022 — presumably to encourage employees to return next school year.
Bonuses are heavily taxed, so the check going into teachers’ pockets for this school year will be about $800. It seems unrealistic to expect that amount to end the educator exodus.
CMS is not alone in its staffing struggles and other counties are also using federal funds to encourage staff to stay. Senate leader Phil Berger’s own Rockingham County is giving employees a $4,000 bonus spread over two years. Wake County — most similar to CMS in scale — will pay a $5,000 bonus.
It’s worth mentioning that Wake’s federal funds amount to $214 million. In other words, Wake has $100 million less in the pot than CMS, but has committed double the amount to retain employees. CMS could absolutely do what Wake did, even more if district leadership saw fit.
Addressing our staffing crisis starts with really understanding how grave it is. I’d encourage decision makers to come visit our schools and see what things actually look like on the ground. Go to Olympic High, visit classrooms and talk with teachers who are at the breaking point. Ask them what they need, what would actually make a difference. Ask students how the lack of teachers is affecting their experience.
Ultimately, the decisions that we make have to be about providing the best student learning outcomes that we can. To do that we must use whatever resources we have available to ensure that every CMS classroom contains an excellent and committed teacher.