Yesterday, Governor McCrory and Speaker of the House Thom Tillis held a press conference to announce alterations to their original Teacher Pay Plan. This new plan will be part of a new bill.

“There will be no teacher in the state who, in a couple years, if they follow our plan, will make less than $35,000 a year,” McCrory said. 

The governor said teachers would get paid more for having master’s degrees and schools would get more money for textbooks, which is a growing problem in the state. A new pilot program would also be set up which would award teachers based on experience, leadership, performance, and market value. 

“All these things can happen without sacrificing 4,000 to 6,000 teachers’ assistants, without sacrificing Medicaid,” McCrory said. “We can also do this while meeting the educational needs to pre-k, colleges, and universities.” – ABC 11

So, in essence, all the changes made in the past year are now gone.

The new plan will give teachers at 5% raise, allow them to keep tenure and includes keeping teacher assistants. Tillis added that the Education lottery funds are not needed to support the proposed bill. On hand was NC Superintendent and CCSSO President Elect, June Atkinson. Apparently, this has her blessing yet was quoted by ABC 11 as saying it was ‘not nearly enough’. That figured, right?  The Governor would do well to get rid of Common Core if he intends to keep this promise — the costs to NC for keeping and implementing it are estimated at over $640 million for just the first five years. That does not include testing.

Watch the clip from the press conference via News and Observer on YouTube:

Let’s countdown until the NCAE and their Moral Monday pals find something about this to complain about. I’m sure they are licking their chops to bite into Senator Phil Berger’s Op Ed which came out a day before the press conference.