Kim Mackey & Derek Scott teamed up to create this site to support an informed, data-driven discussion of teacher pay in North Carolina. The data helps to explain why our state isn’t adequately recruiting and retaining teachers.
We hope this information equips and empowers public school supporters to tell their representatives in the North Carolina General Assembly to restore previous wage power to begin repairing the harm to our state’s teacher pipeline.
The future of North Carolina’s schoolchildren, including our sons and daughters, depends on restoring a salary schedule that recruits and retains great teachers.
Kim Mackey
Kim Mackey has been a social studies teacher in North Carolina since 2007 and has researched salary changes since 2013. She’s excited to join forces on this project with Derek Scott’s research and programming skills to help empower others to tell their stories and counter false narratives.
The wage power of the teacher salary schedule she “signed up for” was the high water mark for state investment in teacher pay. Like many veteran teachers, she has worked over a year for free. Her NC Teacher Tax is $84,148 which would have helped avoid loans for home repairs and save more for her children’s college funds.
Her advocacy efforts have been spurred not only by personal financial impact, but by witnessing great colleagues who loved to teach leave education for higher paying fields and wondering who will be left to teach her children and the students she continues to serve.
You can follow Kim on her blog educatEDpolicy, on Twitter or Facebook.
Derek Scott
Derek Scott is a Wake Forest-based computer programmer who has been working on data-driven advocacy for public education and teacher pay since 2017. His analysis can be found on Medium, Politics NC, and Twitter. His wife, Heather, served on the Wake County Board of Education from 2018-2022. He’s excited for the opportunity to work with a tireless advocate like Kim Mackey on this project.
Teacher pay is an incredibly important foundation of our teacher pipeline, and the realities of it are often obscured from the public by flurries of numbers. By sharing this kind of analysis we can show people which numbers matter, and why, so that they know how to demand better policy.
Update: Sadly, Derek suddenly passed away June 2023. You can honor Derek’s legacy by using your voice for issues you care about. You’ll meet a lot of great people like Derek. RIP friend.