“Losing your job is definitely a thought in the back of your mind. You try not to think about it and you try to do what you do every day,” math teacher Seth Risinger said. “It is definitely a thought that, at some point in time, most people have.”
The state of North Carolina is experiencing budget cuts that could affect this generation and the ones to come. Some feel the education system is the subject absorbing the brunt of the changes.
“The cuts to education are huge,” English teacher Pat Thornhill said. “I have a strong fear that what will happen over time is that public education as we know it now and how we’ve known it in the past, is basically going to disappear in North Carolina.”
Because of the legislature changes to North Carolina in Jan. 2012-13, some teachers at Northwood are experiencing financial struggles. Teachers only collected a 1.5 percent raise in the last five years.
“[There is] less money; the amount we pay for health benefits has increased and things are costing more: it is just harder to make ends meet,” science teacher Darian Cork said.
North Carolina’s legislature has cut $500 million from the educational system, leaving fewer teachers, supplies, buses and textbooks. Three thousand teacher assistant positions were lost in 2013, according to ABC News.
“We’re losing funding and of course we’re going to lose very good teachers because of teacher pay,” Thornhill said.
On Feb. 9, Governor Pat McCrory said in a press conference that there are plans to raise teachers earnings by 14 percent, but this only applies to teachers who have been in the classroom between zero and three years. Teachers who have worked for a decade or more do not qualify. Since his original statement, he has said he would like to eventually raise pay for all teachers.
In 2008, the education budget was just over $7 billion, but during the 2014 fiscal year, $500 million less is predicted to be spent. That amount is not enough to keep up with the rapidly growing population, according to NC Policy Watch.
Students may experience longer bus rides, larger classes, the loss of some extra curricular activities and help after school may be dismissed. Teachers and staff also could encounter salary cutbacks and loss of positions.
Claude Pope, the chairman of the NCGOP or North Carolina Grand Old Party (Republican Party), is a proponent of the budget cuts. He feels that even though people are upset about what is happening, they should not object.
“Would the losing team of the Super Bowl go protest the winning team’s locker room because they lost the game and they fumbled the ball?” Pope told Fox News.
About 10,000 people hit the streets of Raleigh to protest against the education cuts.
Alan McSurely, North Carolina lawyer and civil rights activist, is the co-founder of “Moral Mondays,” which is the common term used to describe the protests, named by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.)
“We had a church service on Sunday night and we came up with this name ‘Moral Monday’ because we decided we would do it every Monday afternoon,” McSurely said.
“[The Tea Party Republicans] bring out all of these really reactionary ideas, basically anything with the word public in front of it with it being their number one target. Anything that uses money to try to make society a little more fair, to try to even out the playing field,” McSurely said. “We got together and we said we have to do something to stop it.”
McSurely and his long time colleague and friend, Rev. William Barber, took action by giving the community a chance to speak out. When McSurely and Barber first started the protests, only a handful of people showed up, but the word spread all across the state. McSurely feels that North Carolina was prepared to speak out.
“They were ready. There has been a pent up progressive strain in North Carolina that is ready to move,” McSurely said. “Let’s all go forward together and not one step back.”
— Skyler Waugh