Governor Josh Stein sat down with a roundtable of UNC Greensboro School of Education students and early-career teachers from Guilford County Schools on Tuesday, using the visit to talk up North Carolina's newly enacted teacher pay raises while listening to what classroom veterans still say is missing. The governor toured campus teaching labs and heard directly from the people the state is counting on to fill its classrooms in the years ahead.
Stein posted about the meeting on social media, writing that teachers perform an essential service preparing kids for the future and that “we must value their work,” framing the visit as a chance to hear what future and beginning teachers need to succeed, according to Governor Josh Stein. During the stop, he toured the School of Education's American Sign Language Lab, its Student Educator Learning Factory Design Studio, and its Teaching Resources Center, according to the NC Governor's Office. The roundtable brought together UNCG education students preparing to enter the workforce alongside Guilford County educators already teaching, as reported by WFMY News 2.
A Record Pay Raise, With Caveats
The centerpiece of Stein's message was the $34.4 billion state budget he signed into law on July 7, which delivers an 8% average pay raise for K-12 public school teachers — the largest average teacher raise in the state in 20 years — along with a 17% increase for starting teachers, per the same office's account. That starting-teacher increase is the largest in nearly 50 years, according to the seed facts tied to Stein's own post about the visit.
The raises follow years of North Carolina lagging the rest of the country on teacher compensation. National Education Association projections had ranked the state 46th nationally in average teacher pay for the 2025–2026 school year, at $59,971, more than $16,500 below the national average, the station's report notes. North Carolina had also fallen behind every other southeastern state in average teacher pay heading into this budget cycle.
Veteran Teachers Say the Gains Aren't Even
Not every educator sees the new budget as a fix-all. Veteran teachers have voiced frustration that while starting pay jumped 17%, salary steps for experienced teachers stayed largely flat, with pay frozen across experience steps 15 through 24, according to Queen City News. That imbalance is compounded by older policy decisions — the state eliminated master's degree pay supplements in 2013 and cut longevity pay in 2014, leaving longtime teachers with fewer avenues to see their pay climb as they gain experience.
Beyond the base salary numbers, the budget also expanded North Carolina's Advanced Teaching Roles program, raising its appropriation to $40.9 million for the 2026–2027 school year, and created a new initiative called TeachReadyNC to support teacher apprenticeships, according to EdNC. The Advanced Teaching Roles program provides stipends to experienced educators who mentor peers while staying in the classroom, giving veteran teachers another route to added compensation outside the traditional pay scale.
Why UNCG, and Why Now
UNC Greensboro's School of Education carries some academic weight of its own: it tied for 81st nationally among graduate education schools in the 2025–2026 U.S. News & World Report rankings and ranked 4th overall within North Carolina, per the university's own announcement. The school offers 16 initial teacher licensure programs across multiple departments, making it a natural stop for a governor looking to court the state's next generation of educators.
The same July budget that raised teacher pay also included campus-specific funding for UNCG, providing state capital funds toward a new campus library and $2.4 million to launch an esports program, as reported by The Assembly NC. Those capital dollars come from the state's broader Capital and Infrastructure Fund rather than any education-specific pool.
A Broader Reckoning Still Underway
Stein's office has framed the raises as a necessary first step rather than a final solution, pointing to the scale of the state's underinvestment in K-12 education. State data cited by the governor's office in August showed North Carolina ranked second-to-last nationally in per-pupil K-12 funding before the new budget, spending $5,660 less per student than the national average, according to the NC Governor's Office.
The larger policy debate over teacher pay and school governance now sits with a 29-member Blue Ribbon Commission on Public Education, which Stein formed jointly with Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and House Speaker Destin Hall in March. The commission, created under executive order and legislative authorization, is tasked with examining teacher training, administrative operations, and school accountability statewide, according to EdNC.
For now, the Greensboro visit offered a snapshot of the two audiences most directly affected by the state's shifting teacher-pay landscape: students like Sawyer Wemyss, a UNCG education student, and the Guilford County teachers already navigating classrooms shaped by decades of underfunding. Whether the budget's early gains translate into lasting retention may depend on what the Blue Ribbon Commission recommends next, and how lawmakers respond to the pay gaps veteran teachers say still remain unresolved.
