Search our new Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools salary database for latest figures
Hundreds of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools employees started the new year this week with long-awaited raises following the passage of state budget that was a year overdue.
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More than two dozen teachers’ salaries rose by more than 25%, with some even experiencing 50% to 70% raises, according to an Observer analysis of the latest school district salary data. Total pay is determined by a combination of state pay raises and increases from the county.
The state gave average raises of 8% to teachers in its new budget. However, they’re heavily weighted toward beginning educators, who can expect to see raises of around 17%. Base pay for beginning teachers in North Carolina rose from $41,000 last year to $48,000 this school year.
Veteran teachers will see a more modest increase from the state of around 5.5%.
Gov. Josh Stein said more needs to be done to support experienced teachers, but that the budget brings “real money raises that begin to show our teachers that we value them.” North Carolina ranks 40th in the country for teacher pay, Stein said.
Meanwhile, CMS increased the supplemental amount Mecklenburg County adds to each teacher’s pay – which ranges from about $8,000 to $14,000 annually – by 5% across the board.
The median pay for school employees has risen since last year too.
The latest salary data reveals the median teacher pay in the district is more than $66,000 this year, compared to about $62,900 last year. Principals and assistant principals got a boost too.
However, ROTC teachers generally did not get raises. They get paid much more than their non-ROTC colleagues.
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The median hourly wage among custodians and bus drivers went up by about a dollar to $21.01 and $22.46 an hour, respectively.
Each year, the Observer updates its public pay database with the salaries for all CMS employees.
The district is the second largest in the state, and 16th biggest in the nation. It serves about 140,000 students across 185 schools, according to the district’s website. About 18,000 people work for the district.
The district would not specify who is full-time because it said that detail isn’t open to public inspection per state law. The district also provided only hourly wages for some employees and annual pay for others, hence the two separate pay columns in our database.
The data show the top paid employee is Superintendent Crystal Hill, who got about a 10% raise, bringing her to nearly $351,000. The bulk of that increase came directly from the CMS board, which awarded Hill a 7% salary increase in December. The state added an additional 3% this summer.
Hill’s deputy superintendent and chief finance officer, Melissa Balknight and Kelly Kluttz, make the second-highest salaries: about $248,500 each.
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Reporter Rebecca Noel contributed to this story
