Senate budget would eliminate NC Teaching Fellows

A line-item cut in the state budget proposed by the N.C. Senate would eliminate all funding for the North Carolina Teaching Fellows Program, phasing it out completely by 2015.

While the House version of the budget would only cut administrative costs for the program, the Senate’s version would end the state’s obligation to students after the 2011-12 class of Teaching Fellows graduates.

Teaching Fellows is a merit-based program that awards a scholarship of $6,500 per year to 500 high school seniors annually, training them for future professions in education. Fellows must teach in N.C. public schools for four years following graduation.

Matt Hughes, executive assistant to Student Body President Mary Cooper and a Teaching Fellow, said it is understandable that educational programs would receive some cuts since education spending makes up almost 60 percent of the state budget.

But Hughes said legislators should be aiming to bolster rather than defund the program during a tough budgetary period. Teachers are vital for improving N.C.’s economic future, he said.

“If anything, now is the time to expand Teaching Fellows,” Hughes said. “Without it, I know there are students who would not have considered becoming teachers.”

Among the most recent graduates of the program to complete the required four years of teaching, 84 percent have remained in education, said Jo Ann Norris, administrator of the Teaching Fellows program.

Almost 4,000 graduates were employed in public schools in all but one of the state’s counties in 2010-11, Norris said.

She added that the program is unique among scholarships for high school students.

“There isn’t another program like Teaching Fellows anywhere in the nation,” she said. “It is much more than a money scholarship — it has a program with it.”

Hughes said the program has given him an advantage by granting access to school districts across the state.

“I got a firsthand look at the profession, students and circumstances throughout North Carolina,” he said.

Nishelle Caudill, an alumna of the Teaching Fellows program and a math teacher at Macon Middle School in Franklin, N.C., wrote a letter to legislators last week in defense of the program.

“Teaching Fellows is more than a budget line item” she said in the letter. “It prepares future teachers to be leaders, not just someone who stands in the front of the classroom.”

House and Senate members must still compromise on a version of the budget before the end of the fiscal year on June 30. Legislators did not return calls for comment.

Gov. Bev Perdue could also intervene and veto the budget to force concessions for less education cuts. Norris said Perdue has defended education spending in the past and could veto the bill to protect the program.

“It would be a travesty to phase out a program that sets North Carolina apart and has such a great history of success,” she said.

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