Durham Association of Educators march for full school funding

School advocates rally at Durham Central Park.Photo byAlex Bass/Tribune

By Alex Bass

alex.bass@triangletribune.com

DURHAM – The May 28 school day was done. Durham Association of Educators members, still, had an extra half mile to go. The cadence for the march from Foster Street’s Central Park Pavilion to the Durham County Commissioners’ Main Street meeting chamber was set by Mo Green, the Democratic candidate for N.C. Superintendent of Public Instruction endorsed by the N.C. Association of Educators.

“I am a champion of public education,” Green exhorted Association members to repeat after him in a call and response fashion, only louder the second time. “Let’s try it one more time, why don’t we?”

Tuesday’s march was another DAE quest to pursue a $27 million-plus increase in the Commissioners’ proposed DPS budget for the 2024-25 academic year. Commissioners have outlined a revised budget proposal that would include approximately one-half of DAE’s desired increase.

“This is the prioritization of the prioritization of the prioritization,” DAE President Symone Kiddoo, a DPS social worker, said. “We have shrunk down what feels like to the bare minimum to keep our schools functioning next year. If they shave off anything else, we are going to be losing staff members.”

Kiddoo referenced the reinstatement of pay raises announced and withdrawn during the current school year marked by DPS employee protests that closed schools due to staffing shortages. There, too, are matters of offering comparable total compensation packages relative to adjacent school systems that provide benefits like master’s degree pay and supplements for exceptional children’s services.

North Carolina public schools, Green said, are funded at $5,000 below the national per pupil spending average ­– nearly the lowest of all states.

“There will not be a next year for a lot of these folks,” Kiddoo said of employees considering jobs in other school systems and beyond education.

Green affirmed that educators must be revered and identified several groups beyond classroom teachers and instructional assistants who are educators.

“That’s our counselors, our cafeteria workers, custodians, our bus drivers,” he said. “You know the list. The list is long.”

These groups’ English cadences were accented by Spanish in a bilingual chant of “The people, united, will never be defeated” on the journey to Main Street. There, before entering the Commissioners’ meeting chamber – where DAE members participated in the meeting’s public comment section – additional educators addressed the marchers.

Nykia Watson, a Lowes Grove Middle cafeteria worker, highlighted the daily realities – unseen by Commissioners – of frontline educators beset by below market value pay who still must serve students, while uncertain how their bills will be paid.

“We can’t go and bring it to our office. We have to go out there and fight the battle,” Watson said. “So, when are they going to come and fight our battle? When are you going to do what’s right for your operation?”