Math, meals, period products and book challenges: What's in the budget for K-12 education
The budget, unveiled Tuesday by lawmakers, includes everything from math education improvements to banning “meals of shame” for students and new rules for teacher licensure.
By Emily Walkenhorst, WRAL education reporter
North Carolina lawmakers’ newly unveiled state budget contains dozens of policy changes and budget adjustments affecting K-12 education.
It’s the first budget proposal between the House and Senate in nearly three years, totaling more than 600 pages of changes to state government. The House hopes to begin voting on it this week.
The budget, released Tuesday, includes everything from math education improvements to banning “meals of shame” for students and new rules for teacher licensure.
That’s in addition to 8% average raises for teachers — with higher raises for less-experienced teachers — and varied bonuses for teachers, unveiled last month. Teachers with 16 or more years of experience would receive $1,000 bonuses, and teachers with less than that would receive $500 bonuses.
The proposal would spend $15.6 billion on public schools, the biggest area of expense in the state budget. That's up from $14.6 billion.
Raises and bonuses for instructional staff alone would cost about $600 million and most other new education funding would go toward compensation and benefits. That's paid for in part by cuts to vacant jobs across state government, freeing up funds that haven't been spent in some time. It's also paid for in part by a drop in public school enrollment that will save the state about $100 million next year in estimated per-student spending.
Among the other proposals in the budget:
Math changes. The budget proposes changes to math education, including adding screeners for math deficits for young students and requiring more time on grade-level math in low-performing schools. Students struggling in math would also get individual plans to help them. The budget also includes provisions for contracts for new math initiatives and funding to buy another state's K-8 math curriculum and adapt it for North Carolina. That last part is funded with $10 million saved by the state from public school students who moved to private schools in the past two years.
Bonuses. The state is using the rest of its savings from those students on two other projects: $17 million for a bonus of $1,750 for all school nutrition and custodial staff and $13.8 million for middle school teachers' professional development in literacy.
Literacy. The bill would also extend literacy screening to fourth and fifth graders, along with parental notice of any reading difficulties shown by the screeners. Current law requires those for kindergarten through third grade. The budget proposal also would automatically enroll certain students in advanced English language arts classes. Any middle school and high school students who test well in English would be moved up, unless their parents or guardians objected. The state already does that in math, and leaders have credited that with enrolling more students in advanced coursework, including students across historically underrepresented demographics.
Period products. The budget would also change a highly popular grant program for period products into a program that disburses the products to schools based on the numbers of sixth- through 12th-grade girls they enroll. The period products are free for students to use, and they would be provided by the Diaper Bank of North Carolina.
School meals. The budget would also incentivize schools to participate in the federal school meals program that provides free meals to all students, called the Community Eligibility Provision program. It would incentivize schools to participate by funding any portion of the meals not covered by the federal reimbursement for serving them.
‘Meals of shame.’ The draft budget would also prohibit schools from serving so-called “meals of shame” to students in too much meal debt. In many school districts — including Wake until this past school year — students who have borrowed more than a few meals' worth from their cafeteria are served a substitute meal that includes only fruits and vegetables and no protein-based entree. The change could come at a temporary cost for school cafeterias, as they await reimbursement from families in debt.
