At an education event held this morning, Gov. Roy Cooper encouraged leaders in business and education to support improvements in North Carolina’s K-12 school system, including an increase in teacher pay.
Cooper served as a special guest at the Public School Forum of North Carolina’s 3rd Annual Eggs & Issues Breakfast at Marbles Kids Museum in Raleigh.
“North Carolina has fallen behind on teacher pay, and we must get our teachers’ salaries up to the national average,” Cooper said. “I’m committed to raising teacher pay and will fight to make significant progress every year until we get there.”
The Governor discussed several core topics related to education policy, including the value of scholarship programs that incentivize students to enter the teaching profession and treating teaching as a career rather than a job. Cooper placed special emphasis on raising public school teachers’ salaries in this year’s upcoming legislative session.
“Our schools have made our state great, and we have to make our public schools the best they can be,” Cooper said. “But we are slipping, and we have a lot of work to do all the way from early childhood to higher education.”
Cooper’s remarks were filmed as part of an interview conducted by Keith Poston, which will be featured in full in an upcoming episode of Education Matters. Education Matters is a weekly, 30-minute television show that covers the state of public education in North Carolina. The show airs on WRAL on Saturdays at 7:30 PM, and episodes are available to stream online at ncforum.org.