The House Select Committee on Education Reform acknowledged on Monday the need for changes to the state’s current principal pay plan and recommended a study be conducted on “the impact that a new salary schedule may have on principal recruitment and retention.” The draft findings and recommendations were approved by committee members and ultimately included in the interim committee’s final report to the General Assembly for consideration and potential legislative action during the 2024 short session beginning next month.
“The Committee finds that strong school leadership is important in providing an environment that fosters growth in students and teachers,” the report notes. The report also highlights many of the points previously shared with the committee in a recent presentation from two regional principals of the year, including the possibility of incorporating additional factors in principal pay, such as the complexity of a school and the longevity of a principal’s service. While the committee’s report was not as direct in its recommendations as many educators and advocates had hoped, NCASA and its core affiliate NCPAPA were pleased by the committee’s commitment to continue working on improvements to the pay plan.
In addition to the findings and recommendations on principal pay, the report also addresses other education topics that have been discussed by the committee so far this year, including teacher compensation and the Advanced Teaching Roles Program, school technology and student devices, learning loss recovery, mathematics reform, school performance grades, charter school funding, and student mental health support personnel.
The report recommended the General Assembly “continue to work” on many of these topics, but seemingly included stronger language in regard to reforming the state’s school accountability system; specifically, the committee seemed to support the NC Department of Public Instruction’s recent proposal to reform school performance grades through the committee’s recommendation that the General Assembly “modify the current A-F school performance grades by adopting a model that would create a summative grade based on an average of individual school performance grades in four areas.”
While no additional meetings of the Education Reform committee have been scheduled, committee co-chairs Rep. John Torbett (R-Gaston) and Rep. Brian Biggs (R-Randolph) shared their intent for the committee to continue meeting after the conclusion of the 2024 short session.
