The Public School Spending scam: WHERE has all the money gone?

It’s hard to find anyone willing to go out on a limb and argue that teachers don’t need to be paid more.  Most proponents of that concept are well aware of the crap that teachers have to put up with these days — red tape, insolent parents, bratty kids, violence.

It always seems that – no matter what gets appropriated to public education — it’s never enough.  The political activists and unions keep screaming for more. Much of that anger tends to be directed at elected Republicans at the state and federal level.  Never mind that most of those folks appropriate lump sums that are later earmarked by local leaders (county commissioners, school boards) for specific end-uses.

Quite a few times, money will be allocated to local authorities for specific uses but will be redirected somewhere else.  Here in Moore County, we had the county commissioners supplying the school board with money to re-do athletic fields at two schools.  Some time later, those schools asked about plans for redoing their fields, and were told there was no money for the project(s).  The cash made it to the central office, but vanished like a yacht passing through the Bermuda Triangle.  (Hopefully, it just went somewhere the central office bureaucrats were more excited about.) 

I am sure there are stories like that in each of the state’s 100 counties.

Quite often, teachers are forced to pay out of their pockets for classroom supplies. (All while six-figure salaried central office PhDs are mutliplying like rabbits.) 

Check out what one of the good guys in Raleigh found out about the financing of classroom supplies:

And here is another one of the good guys in Raleigh asking about a butt-load of COVID money that got directed to the state’s public schools:

Teacher pay has been much in the news lately. Thousands of North Carolina teachers are supposed to descend on Raleigh next Friday to protest no state budget and lobby for higher salaries and more funding for public education. In addition, Gov. Stein made news recently when he proposed an 11 percent pay increase for teachers as part of his new 2026–27 budget. Legislative proposals have been less generous with the House proposing teacher salary increases of 8.7 percent over two years and the Senate, 3.3 percent over two years along with bonuses. Still, both branches have been unable to come to a budget agreement and those numbers remain largely starting points. In the meantime, educators are angry and have not received a statewide raise since July 2024.

Do teachers need higher salaries? Yes. But before we begin a full-scale discussion, let’s remember, while teachers have not received statewide raises in almost two years, teachers and educators have received bonuses, salary supplements and additional pay as part of federal Covid-relief efforts.

People forget that North Carolina public schools received $6.2 billion between 2020 and 2025 to aid schools and educators with the Covid-19 pandemic. Figures published by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction reveal 51.5 percent of all Covid-relief dollars in North Carolina were spent on salaries and benefits. Accordingly, school districts spent $2,642,859,231 on salaries, bonuses and stipends during the period 2020 to 2025.

 Although the overall amounts are clear, our understanding of how the money was spent is not. That’s because when school districts received Covid funding, they were only required to state what the money was spent on.

For example, if the money funded a tutoring program, there was no requirement to demonstrate what impact the program had on student learning or test scores. So, we have boxes with lots of big numbers but little understanding of how the money was distributed.

The chart below lists the 12 largest expenditures from the “salaries” category for total Covid spending for North Carolina public schools from 2020 to 2025. North Carolina public schools spent over $2.6 billion dollars on “salaries” and other pay categories.

Some of the largest categories include $990.3 million was spent on “bonus pay”, another $101.1 million for “Supplement/Supplementary Pay and $133.7 for “Instructional Support.” The largest pay category is, by far, “Bonus Pay (Not Subject to Retirement)” with $990.3 million in expenditures. A review of the spreadsheet, reveals all but $22.7 million of those funds were distributed between 2022 and 2024

For the sake of argument, let’s say bonus pay was divided equally among all education employees. Over the time period 2022 to 2024, on average there were 174,218 employees. That means school employees in North Carolina received a total of $5,684 over those three years. Again, more than likely funds are not distributed equally among all employees. Still, the figure gives you some sense of how much money was distributed.

A few categories are more specific in where the money is going, these include Teacher and Instructional Support I. Over $273.8 million was awarded in teacher salaries. What does that mean? Again about $250 million was awarded during the period 2022–2024. If evenly distributed among all teachers, teachers would have received about $2,668 over that three-year period.

The numbers listed here are totals and school districts spend money differently. For example, Wake County received $434.2 million in Covid-relief funds. Of that amount, WCPSS spent approximately 76 percent of all funds on salaries and benefits, including $49.7 million on teacher pay and $120.5 million for bonus pay (With No Retirement). If money is distributed equally to all teachers, teachers would have received $4,664 over two years (10,700 teachers). Likewise, regarding bonus pay all WCPSS employees would have received approximately $6,178 in bonus pay over two years.

The point: North Carolina educators received significant federal Covid-relief funding. However, important information about how that money was specifically distributed and spent is missing.

Do North Carolina teachers need a pay raise? Yes. However, before we begin a discussion on teacher pay wouldn’t it be worthwhile to know how our school districts spent $2.6 billion in salaries?

There is a lot of tax money flowing through the state’s public school bureaucracy. As responsible citizens, we have to ask:  Are we providing adequate oversight on these bureaucrats who are receiving and distributing this money?  Are we doing enough to ensure money is going where it is supposed to go?