RALEIGH (May 29, 2025) – News Item: “Raleigh to raise police, city employees’ pay, but will it be competitive enough?”

The article this week in The News & Observer of Raleigh went on to recount how the city manager is proposing an 11% raise for police officers, in part due to attrition, understaffing and low morale in its police force.

The proposal would raise the starting salary for Raleigh police officers from $55,331 to $61,417. Charlotte’s starting pay for an officer is $58,623 and Greensboro’s is $59,500. Durham’s is $54,817, but comes with a $10,000 bonus for completion of basic law enforcement training.

Among Raleigh’s suburbs, low-crime Cary starts officers at $63,502, Wake Forest at $63,173, and Holly Springs at $60,000-63,000.¹

NOW COMPARE that to starting pay for a teacher in Wake County Public Schools: $48,340.² For someone who’s required to have a four-year college degree and help build our most precious resource – our children.

(And Wake is more generous than most North Carolina school districts with its local supplements; the General Assembly supplies only $41,000 for starting teachers.)

Don’t get us wrong – we don’t begrudge police officers a raise. Theirs is a thankless job. And given the city’s hiring difficulties and attrition, it’s a matter of supply and demand.

But police officers and teachers should both be able to afford to live in the communities they serve. That only makes them better at what they do.

What does it say about us that we’re willing to pay teachers nearly $7,000 (13%) less than police, with possibly an even greater gap in the future?

What does that say about our values as a community, and as a state?

North Carolina now ranks 43rd in the nation in average teacher pay and 39th in starting teacher pay.³ South Carolina, believe it or not, pays starting teachers $6,000 more than we do.⁴

Meanwhile, our state legislature is struggling to get beginning teacher pay to $50,000 over the next two years.

We need to do better by our public school teachers.

THAT’S WHY it’s important to support the state House’s budget proposal for the 2025-27 state budget.

Unlike the miserly state Senate, the House’s proposal would raise pay for K-12 public school teachers by an average of 8.7% over two years – and an average of 17.7% over two years for beginning teachers.⁵

Teachers equip our children with the skills they need to build productive lives – lives where we hope they don’t have encounters with police.

We need to show both our teachers and our officers better appreciation for the critical jobs they do.

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1 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article306782806.html.
2 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tbY1hnQj1Kt2GiXtlAjziOvW1REFvGM3/edit?gid=1858261768#gid=1858261768.
3 https://publicedworks.org/2025/05/nc-teacher-pay-now-ranks-43rd/.
4 https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article287944265.html.
5 https://publicedworks.org/2025/05/house-budget-shows-promise-for-teacher-pay/.