RALEIGH (March 11, 2026) – News Item: Over the past two years, North Carolinians have spent $13 billion betting on sports.1
Yet North Carolinians can’t come up with $1.5 billion to pay our public-school teachers properly.
We rank 43rd among the states in average teacher pay, 39th in starting teacher pay,2 and 50th – 50th, as in last – in the percentage of our economy we invest in our public schools.3
What is wrong with us? What does that say about our priorities as a society? We have the capability, the wherewithal to invest in our public schools – we just don’t. Why not?
We need to focus on our state legislature.
Our elected officials in Raleigh can’t even pass a state budget, even though Republicans control both chambers of the legislature. This is not a partisan issue. North Carolina remains the only state in the union that hasn’t passed a budget for 2025-26 – a budget year that began eight months ago.
Sure, the taxes the state reaps from sports betting raise a few hundred thousand dollars for the athletic departments at 13 UNC System schools.4 And NCAA office-pool brackets are a fun pastime.
But if we can devote $13 billion to gambling on sports, yet our state legislators – particularly those in the state Senate – aren’t willing to pay our teachers properly, what does that say about our values?
It’s no wonder 10% of our public-school teachers leave the profession every year.5 How long can that last?
What an embarrassment. What a disgrace. What a dysfunctional legislature.
And what a really bad gamble on our children’s future.
Legislators like to assign letter grades to our public schools. Well maybe we should assign letter grades to legislators. Right now they deserve a big fat F for their support for teachers and the public schools that continue to educate the vast majority of this state’s students.
Our gerrymandered General Assembly is an utter embarrassment across the country.
This is an election year. The primaries are over, but not all are settled yet. We still have an opportunity in November to hold state legislators accountable for their repeatedly failing our children.
Remember that.
1 https://www.wral.com/news/nccapitol/sports-betting-north-carolina-two-years-in-february-revenue-march-2026/.
2 https://publicedworks.org/2025/05/nc-teacher-pay-now-ranks-43rd/.
3 https://edlawcenter.org/research/making-the-grade-2025/. See Funding Effort.
4 https://www.wral.com/news/nccapitol/sports-betting-north-carolina-two-years-in-february-revenue-march-2026/.
5 https://publicschoolsfirstnc.org/north-carolina-is-losing-too-many-teachers/; https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article314910826.html.
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