Why might your kid not have a bus driver or teacher this year? Remember NCGA leaders admit they don’t want to compete for staff.

At yesterday’s WCPSS school board meeting, it was shared that some middle and high school students may only receive regular school transportation on an A/B every other week basis because there are 17 bus driver vacancies.

While many folks’ knee-jerk reaction is to assume this is a local problem with local deficits needing a solution with local resources, it’s important to remember that in North Carolina the state is responsible for funding staff and operations while local governments are tasked with funding facilities.

Unfortunately state leaders like Sen. Phil Berger openly admit as recently as this spring:

“One of the last things that we want to do is create a situation where state government raises pay so much that it exacerbates the larger economies as far as availability of workers”

Folks like Sen. Berger are apparently more worried about whether or not a private business has enough employees with a CDL at the expense of your kids and mine having reliable school bus transportation.

For years, the state has not responsibly funded staffing as proven by the many vacancies among bus drivers, teachers, cafeteria staff, school psychologists and many other roles. Only recently did the state increase the minimum wage for school support staff from around $11/hour to $15/hour, and this came years after offering this to all other state workers except school staff.

$15/hour is not a competitive starting salary to ensure your kids have reliable bus service, no matter where you live in the state when other jobs requiring a CDL start over $20/hour.

Through local supplements offered by county commissioners, some districts like Wake County offer a starting salary of $17.20/hour.

Counties who want to compete for staff shouldn’t be in a position to raise local property taxes to pay for state responsibilities because Republican leaders in the NCGA refuse to offer competitive pay for public workers while slashing corporate income taxes.

It doesn’t make sense until you recognize it’s happening by design.

What’s playing out is a plan to undermine public schools and support for local districts in order to sell people on the idea of private school vouchers. While the state is only willing to offer $15/hour in starting pay for someone to drive your kid’s bus, Republicans in Raleigh are set to expand private school voucher funding by hundreds of millions of dollars this decade and allow parents already paying for their kid’s private school tuition to qualify for thousands of dollars in voucher money each year.

Some folks on social media have already posted statements saying if they can’t get reliable transportation with public schools, they may as well drive their kids to private schools if they have to drive their kids anyhow. While the logic of the cost/benefit analysis is shaky, these folks are falling for the trap voucher-pushers have laid for them.

Folks are directing their ire at their local district while letting state sponsors of the work to undermine public schools off the hook.

The same is true when parents learn that their child’s classroom is staffed by an unqualified long-term substitute instead of a highly-qualified teacher. Look no further than the decimation of the teacher salary schedule to understand the broken teacher pipeline.

While our state sits on billions of dollars in so-called budget surplus built by shortchanging public school students, here’s a summary of the current budget proposals for this year. You can see for yourself how Republican leaders in the NCGA stand by their statement that they don’t want to compete with private businesses for employees.

The same folks saying they don’t want to compete with private business for workers to staff your local public school also say your local public school should compete for students with private schools popping up to cash in on state vouchers.

The truth is, they don’t want to create high quality public schools by fulfilling their state obligation to offer funding that supports a “sound, basic education” as mandated by the near 30 year old Leandro ruling. They’re violating a court order to fulfill a remedial plan to accomplish this task.

They want to replace public schools with private schools so their donors can make money off of the least accountable voucher system in the country. A recent report exposes the grift of schools claiming more vouchers than students.

Parents are being instigated by bad actors undermining public schools with frustrations over busing, lack of qualified teachers and standardized tests all to get parents to throw in the towel on their local public school. Now that you know why, direct your attention to your state legislator if they voted for voucher expansion instead of your local school board.