Fighting Budget Cuts, North Carolina Educators Dig In For the Long Haul
By Brenda Álvarez
Schools may still be out for the summer in North Carolina, but thousands of educators in the Tar Heel State have spent much of July and August rallying in opposition to devastating cuts to public education. Teachers, support staff, parents, and school administrators have come out in droves in massive public protests, and many have gone tojail over it, too.Governor Pat McCrory’s state budget guts half a billion dollars from schools, leaving fewer teachers, textbooks, supplies and school busses to support a growing student population, and—without a pay increase—a faltering education profession.
“Education cuts never heal,” said Amy Harrison, a special education teacher in Guilford County. “We may not see the immediate effects of these cuts this year or the next, but 10 to 15 years down the road when students are in college or entering the workforce that’s when we’ll see them.”
What will be immediate are the 9,000 education positions that will be purged, along with the cap on class sizes and more than 10,000 Pre-K slots and the cap on class sizes.
Protests have been organized by the NAACP every Monday since late April. Called Moral Mondays, these marches have drawn thousands of people from across the state and have given educators a platform to tell