Teacher Appreciation Week 2026 runs from Monday, May 4, to Friday, May 8, with National Teacher Appreciation Day celebrated on Tuesday, May 5.
By Connie Leinbach
Ocracoke teachers joined the statewide “Kids Over Corporations” march on May 1 to demand that the General Assembly pass the budget and include more funding for schools and teachers’ salaries.
About 35 teachers and community members walked from the school building on School Road to the NCCAT building and back.
North Carolina entered 2026 without a finalized 2025–2027 comprehensive budget, which remains stalled as lawmakers in the republican-controlled House and Senate of the General Assembly continue to disagree on key issues, including tax rates, spending priorities, and teacher pay.
Unlike at least 22 school districts across the state that closed because so many employees asked for the day off, Ocracoke School did not close.
On Fridays, Ocracoke School lets out at 11 a.m., which is when the teachers did their march.
After that, many of them went off to their second jobs.
“It’s actually embarrassing that North Carolina is 46th in the nation in teacher pay,” said Mary-Jo Gellenbeck, the school’s Exceptional Children (EC) teacher. “The challenge is recruiting and retention of quality, skilled staff.”
North Carolina’s new teachers often leave after a few years for better pay, she said, adding that the state legislature has been reducing teachers’ salaries over the years.
Calculating for inflation, she said the average teacher salary across the nation is $73,000 this year.
“We’re at $53,000,” she said.
First grade teacher Alice Burruss spoke to the gathering before the walk and noted that the protest was for something simple: respect for the work teachers do and the passage of a state budget that truly supports education.
She said the teachers and staff love the Hyde County School District.
“We feel supported by our community, and we are proud of the work we do every single day,” she said. “But loving our school also means being honest about what’s not working. Our state education system is falling short—it is underfunded, overstretched and asks too much of too many with too little in return.”
The North Carolina Association of Educators organized the protest in Raleigh that drew educators from all over the state. Burruss said the reason Ocracoke had a “satellite” walk is due to the amount of money it would have cost to get everyone there.
“Plus, a lot of people work a second job because they can’t afford not to,” she said.
Earlier in the week, Dr. Melanie Shaver, superintendent of Hyde County Schools, presented the school board what the teachers wanted to do.
“They were fully supportive,” Burruss said of the school board. “This was a march for all North Carolina public schools.”
Debbie Leonard was among a few other retired teachers who joined the walk and noted that North Carolina is becoming less attractive to young teachers.
“When I began teaching teachers received longevity pay,” she said. “They also received a higher salary if they had an advanced degree such as master’s degree, and when they retired, they received their health insurance for free.
“Now they get none of that, yet we have millions of dollars to give to people to send their children to private schools, which have no oversight, don’t have to hire certified teachers, don’t have any standards that they have to meet regarding curriculum, don’t have to teach every child.”
Most of the private schools are religious, she said, and the legislature loosened the regulations so that now anyone can get money.
“If our schools are failing perhaps it is because the legislature has caused them to fail,” she said.
According to the website, www.ednc.org, the average starting teacher pay is $44,952, per the National Education Association data, or 38th in the country. This ranking has improved in recent years, as the General Assembly has given higher raises to beginning teachers.
In March, the state’s nonpartisan Consensus Forecasting Group (CFG) released a revised consensus General Fund Revenue forecast for the 2025-27 biennium, showing that North Carolina has a projected surplus of $370 million in state revenues through Fiscal Year (FY) 2026, a 1.1% increase from the certified budget. For FY 2026-27, there is an estimated $951 million surplus, which is a 2.8% increase from the forecast.
As of May 2026, North Carolina public schools received $12.75 billion in state funding for the 2025-26 school year, a moderate increase from $12.60 billion in 2024-25.
Gov. Josh Stein proposed a 2026-27 budget (building on the 2025 biennium) targeting $2.3 billion in new education investment, including a 10.6% average teacher raise, restored master’s pay, and raising starting teacher salaries to the highest in the Southeast.
