Last week, a group of about 20 educators and parents marched from the Richard Ray All America Park across the street to the Jacksonville Commons Recreation Center, while shouting "Let's go vote!"
The Onslow County Association of Educators organized the local march to the polls to elect candidates who they describe as pro-public education, said Anne Hardinger, the association's president. She says she's seen a lot of support for education among voters at the polls.
"They're done. They're finished with the 'politricks' as we like to call them," Hardinger said. "They want to see our schools back at the top to where we were a few years ago, so they're coming out and voting."
Volunteers have been at the polls daily, handing out red apple-shaped cards that list OCEA's endorsed candidates, Hardinger said. “Our ballot is really purple," Hardinger said. "We interview candidates. We don’t care which side of the aisle they sit on." She says the association wants candidates who "will look out for our public schools and our students and our teachers."
The OCAE endorses both Republican State Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown and his Democratic challenger Joe Webb, who has experience as a teacher, principal and student-teacher supervisor. The association's members were split down the middle in the support for both candidates, Hardinger said.
“Senator Brown’s been around for a very long time. He’s done a lot of positive things for our schools, brought lots of money into our county for our schools. So, he has a lot of people who are dedicated to him and loyal to him,” Hardinger said. “Webb, on the other hand, is an educator. He understands the things that we do every day. He actually trains the people who come in to be teachers. He’s their supervisor. So, he has a first-hand account. He understands our struggles.”
Teacher pay remains below the national average and per-student spending hasn't exceeded pre-recession levels after adjusting for inflation. This has forced some teachers to work a second job and spend their own income on classroom supplies. Hardinger says teachers are hoping to change this reality at the ballot box. “The reason we have what we have in our...elected offices right now is because people sat out in the last election. Educators didn’t vote. People did not vote for education.”
Republican state Senator Harry Brown has supported some education funding policies that are unpopular among public education advocates, including eliminating bonus pay for teachers who earn master’s degrees. Still, many local educators support him. Brown says he believes this is partly because he secured $5 million for a vocational school in Onslow County and $30 million for a new K-12 school in Jones County.
"The last school they built was probably 35 years ago. And they really had no way to build a new school," Brown said. "They’ll be able to replace three old schools with that new school, so that’s going to be good for them."
Joe Webb is Brown’s first Democratic challenger in more than a decade. He says his experience supervising teachers from East Carolina University and UNC- Wilmington helped motivate him to run.
“In my work with ECU and UNC-W, I’m in classrooms all the time, and I’m hearing teachers talk about what they’re losing they’re talking about their struggle to get the materials that they need to teach. And my response to them was you need to contact your legislators because they are funding the budget. And over time I realized I needed to step up and try to be one of those legislators to bring that perspective directly to the classroom” Webb said.
If he’s elected he’ll work to reinstate master’s degree pay and longevity bonus pay for teachers who’ve remained in the profession for at least 10 years, Webb said. State lawmakers eliminated those bonuses, while simultaneously giving teachers across-the-board-pay raises, almost five years ago.
"We need to reinstate longevity pay to give an incentive for those people in their last ten years to stay in and give us the leadership and quality instruction that we need. When a principal turns for leadership, they don’t turn to a beginning teacher they turn to a 20-year veteran,” Webb said.
Webb is one of two educators running for the General Assembly in Onslow County, where every state legislative race has a Democratic and a Republican candidate.
Early voting ends on Nov. 3. Election Day is Nov. 6.